SOCIAL CHANGE AND CITIZEN INVOLVEMENT
IN MODEL CITIES
by
MARGIE KAMINSKY
B. A.,
Wellesley College
(1966)
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTER IN
CITY PLANNING
at the
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY
June, 1968
Signature of Author .....
Department of City and i(gional Planning
........
May 17, 1968.
Certified by.....
,theqAs Supe\visor
Accepted by.....
Chairman, Depart
............
nt Committee on Graduate Students
Archives
V6S.1Ir3S. TrEC
4
JUN 2 7 1968
LEI@R ARIES
ABSTRACT
SOCIAL CHANGE AND CITIZEN INVOLVEMENT IN MODEL CITIES
Margie Kaminsky
Submitted to the Department of City and Regional Planning
on May 17, 1968 in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Master of City Planning.
The thesis examines citizen involvement and some of
the possibilities for its operation within the framework of
the national Model Cities program. "Social change" is used
as an introductory idea, since citizen involvement is one
possible means to such change.
The Demonstration Cities legislation of 1966 called
for "resident participation," which could in practIce vary
greatly from city to city. The legi-elation's "process" goal
of citizen participation was In potential conflict with i'ts
"product" goals of efficient programs. This conflict, and
the program's built-in time constraints, would be important
in determining the kinds of citizen involvement really feasible for Model Cities.
As a pattern for discussion, an analytical framework
for citizen participation is proposed. The major aspect
of this framework is the suggestion that citizen involvement
can serve a number of different purposes or functions. It
can function to attain community mobilization, access to decision processes, political learning and power, and to promote policy or program achievement by the citizens themselves,
Two more aspects of the framework are the structural
and informal context for participation, and the modes or
tactics for its operation. This discussion framework is
then used to analyze two case examples of citizen participation, in Boston and Cambridge Model Cities programs.
In Boston, citizen action centered around the Neighborhood Board, an elected resident body that was officially
parallel to the City'i own Model Cities agency. This study
shows that emphasis in Boston was placed on the nolity and
program-achievement functions of citizen involvement, despite the fact that some of the other functions were critically needed by the community. Unless these other functions could be pursued also, the prospects for Boston's
Model Cities program were dim as far as meaningful citizen
involvement was concerned.
3.
In Cambridge, Model Cities designers made a deliberate
decision to devote initial planning months solely to de-veloping the process of citizen participation. My analysis
indicates that this decision amounted to empahsis on the
political learning and power-building function of citizen
participation. It succeeded in establishing some important
resources for continued participation. In future months,
the focus would shift toward the achievement function, rn
which was likely to encounter problems.
In conclusion, there are some important common lessons
that arise from the Boston and Cambridge experiences. One
of these involves the fact that in both cities the various functions of citizen involvement were all needed to varying degrees; however, the Model Cities program tends to
pressure for emnphsis on the achievement function. That
emphasis seems to endanger the chances for any degree of
successful citizen involvement of any kind.
Another common element is the importance of explicit
recognition that citizen participation has different functional possibilities. Here, the role or orientation of the
involved professionals is likely to be especially important.
One more of the lessons has to do with the difficul-ties of the achievement function. In order for residents
to onerate here wIth any degree of success, careful prepar-ations and professional guidance are of utmost concern.
Thesis Supervisor: Bernard J. Frieden
Title: Associate Professor of City Planning
4.
CONTENTS
Page
ABSTRACT . ..
Chapter I:
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INTRODUCTION AND METHODS .
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2
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. 5
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Chapter II:
CITIZEN PARTICIPATION--WHY AND HOW . . .
8
1. The Purposes of Citizen Involvement . . . 8
2. Tactics and Working Modes of Citizen
Involvement . * . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Chapter III:
CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN THE MODEL CITIES
LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK .
Chapter TV:
2.
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21
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MODEL CITIES UNDERWAY--THE BOSTON
PROGRAM .
1.
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32
Boston Model Cities' Heritage and
Inception . . . . . . . . .
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The Model Neighborhood and the Relevant
Functions of Citizen Involvement
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33
42
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3.
Structural and Informal Powers for Citizen
4.
ivolvement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
The Neighborhood Board as a Working Body. 65
5.
Summary:
The Functions of Citizen Partici. . 84
pation and the Chances for Success. .
Chapter V:
A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE--THE CAMBRIDGE
PROGRAM .
1.
tion in
2.
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Cambridge Model Neighborhood.
89
. . 90
The Structural and Informal Powers for
Citizen Involvement.
3.
4.
5.
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The Relevant Functions of CitIzen Participa.
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*
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99
The Drafting Committee as a Working Body.105
The Potential for Program Achievement. . 120
Summary: The Chances for Successful Fulfillment of the Citizen Participation
Functions. .
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Chapter VT:
CONCLUSIONS
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
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. 144
5.
CHAPTER I:
Introduction and Methods
The purpose of this thesis was to look at some reasons
for having citizen involtement in a government-sponsored program such as Model Cities, and to describe the process as it
has emerged so far in two different Model Cities' cases.
I
have included the notion of "social change," as a broaderscale phenomenon under which both citizen involvement and Model Cities can be included.
Social change is therefore used
here as a contextual introduction to the body of the thesis.
By "social change" I mean any process of changing the
terms by which societal goods are allocated.
This implies
changes in the larger institutional set-up, changes in group
influence and relations with the instititions, and also changes in ihdividual feelings of potency and capabilities to use
opportunities.
Such social change can come about by chance, but it
can also be encouraged by consciously directed effort.
question is how, and where, such efforts can be made.
The
I have
assumed that efforts at urban social change are inevitably related to politics and community power, and that for these
reasons the phenomenon of "citizen involvement" can be a key
social changing element.
My approach, then, was to investigate citizen participation and its manifestations in Model Cities.
For this purpose
I used an analytical framework that considered three major aspects: the functions of citizen involvement, the structural and
6.
informal context for it, and the working modes or tactics
used by participants.
The suggested functions of citizen
participation stem from social change ideas, but are presented as operative reasons for having citizen involvement in any locality.
These are more fully described in
Chapter II, along with the other two aspects of the framework.
Model Cities as a setting for citizen participation
is considered in light of its objectives, as well as its
constraints.
A major consideration was the potential conflict
between two objectives: the speed* planning and implementation
of effective programs and developing a workable process of responsible citizen participation.
Although the two are not
necessarily incompatible, program efficiency is generally
associated with expertise and central autonomy, rather than
with citizen participation and drawn-out consensual processes.
Still another consideration was the constraint of time, which
contrasted sharply with the huge spectrum of concerns included
in the legislative framework.
These considerations, and the analytical framework suggested earlier, are then applied to case examples, to see
whether it is possible to carry out any of the proposed citizen participation functions under Model Cities.
In the con-
cluding chapter I also reassess the analytical framework itself, in terms of its relevance to real citizen participation
processes.
7
Some final comments are in order about the process of
observing what went on in Boston and Cambridge Model Cities
programs.
Observations for this study were made only up to
the fourth or fifth month of the official "planning year" for
both cities.
My main purpose in describing Boston and Cambridge
as examples, was to indicate two of the many actual Model
Cities operations, rather than to compare them.
Also, since the
entire observation period was devoted to substantially different
kinds of activity in the two cities, direct comparisons on the
grounds of substantive accomplishment were not particularly
valuable.
The method of observation further inhibited direct comparison, because it was admittedly lopsided.
I observed the
Cambridge scene as an outsider, getting most information secondhand;
in Boston, I observed and also participated, getting much
more first-hand information, as well as more personal impressions.
Accordingly, I finally chose to devote more space and attention
in this thesis to the Boston program, and to include a less
elaborate description of Cambridge operations, as a means of
adding perspective to the whole.
The final comparisons that
I felt could legitimately be made involved the citizen participation functions relevant to each city, some of the ways in which
they were pursued, and their chances for "success."
8.
CHAPTER II:
1.
CITIZEN PARTICIPATION: WHY AND HOW
The Purposes of Citizen Involvement
The call for "citizen participation" usually refers
to giving people the opportunities to become interested
and involved in action that influences their own living environment, in terms of "community action" endeavors.
The
most recent Federal mandate for this kind of involvement
came in the Model Cities legislation, but the theme arises
as well in other government programs, and in non-government
endeavors.
The first question I wish to raise in this thesis
is, why have citizens "participate#," in any such programs,
which could conceivably be carried out without their direct
involvement.
The immediate response to "why have citizens participate?"
values:
includes a number of reasons, based on our societal
People are held to be rational, and capable of know-
ing and expressing their needs and wants.
They have a right
to determine their own life conditions if they can.
They are
entitled to have a say in determining modes of government expenditure.
They may- have needs that can be met by available
resources if only those needs are expressed.
In short, "citi-
zen participation" is part of the democratic mode of allocating
societal resources.
Even so, citizen participation is but a very general
term that has been used to refer to a variety of purposes and
and processes.
I propose to define a number of possible
9.
functions that citizen involvement might fulfill, depending on specific situations and needs.
The term citizen
"involvement" will be used interchangeably with "participationl) using representation in the broad sense to refer to
the fact that any process of involvement "represents" or embodies various segments of any entire possible universe of
participants.
Each different kind of participation has differ-
ent standards of "success," and different operating emphases.
The type of citizen represetaktion that usually first
comes to mind is that intended to fulfill a function that I
shall call "program achievement."
This kind of participation
is oriented toward structuring, initiating, or designing programs according to the desires expressed by those who will be
affected, or according to the desires expressed by at least
some of those who will be affected.
In order to have a eitizen
involvement process that can fulfill program achievement purposes, there must be existing access to policy-makers, resources
of information and material inputs, and legal or institutional
means for program legitimation.
Only if these necessary con-
ditions are present can citizen participation take on program
achievement as a primary purpose.
This program-achievement function is likely to involve
issues of "representation" in the narrow sense, of exactly who
and how are legitimate representatives in the actual structuring and design of programs.
The fact that a group is organized
and happens to rise from within a community, does not mean
that it represents (in the narrow sense) any or all legitimate
10.
community interests.
Ideally, there could be a fluid situ-
ation where the program achievement function is available to
a number of participating groups to pursue a plurality of interests.
Melvin King, director of Boston's New Urban League,
notes that:
is not a question of which groups
represent a community. The more groups
we get involved in solving a variety of
problems, the more problems we can get
solved. This country was founded on competition...l
1..It
Thus, if citizen participation has as its purpose program achievement, the question of specific representation is
likely to arise.
Conceivably, the leaders or program achievers
could be volunteers, coopted community people, elected people,
or so on.
This is but one of the operational problems in ful-
filling the program-achievement function.
The other outstand-
ing operational concerns center around making sure that the necessary conditions for this function are existing and can be sustained.
Those conditions have already been named as access to
policy, information and other resources, and institfitional legitimizing necessary to actual implementation.
The definition of "success" for citizen participation of
the program-achievement type is just what it says; program achievement.
This could be achievements in terms of the sort of
program under consideration
-
-
that is, the "program" might
be a construction program, a welfare program, the establishment
of a community organization, or so on.
1 Melvin
This kind of citizen
H. King, "The Poverty War, Progress or Illusion,"
The Boston Globe, March 19, 1968, A-35.
11.
involvement is successful when the people to be affected
by the program are reasonably assured of getting what they
need and desire.
The citizen involvement function of program achievement is really a rather high-order function, that requires
a number of prior conditions.
Other citizen involvement
functions may be necessary first, in order to establish these
conditions.
Thus, a second possible citizen-involvement
function is what I call "access attainment."
Citizen repre-
sentation whose purpose is access attainment is oriented toward opening the channels for influencing ultimate policy
makers.
-
It is likely to be a matter of getting the right com-
munity people in the right place at the right times, and
keeping them there long enough to make community influence an
effective input to eventual policy formation by whoever makespolicy.
Citizen involvement functioning to attain access has
its own operating emphases.
It should seek to tap any or &ll
potentially interested or influential community groups, and establish communications whereby the right groups can know where
and when "access"
is possible.
The leaders, or access-attainers,
are probably likely to be- more adept if they have many contacts
in, and pipelines into various parts of the community, as well as
a pipeline to City Hall or wherever the decisions are really
being made.
Such people would be likely to be community activ-
ists already, leaders of existing organizations, or so on.
"Success" here is guaged in terms of the connections that can
- 12.
be made and sustained, between interested community groups
and the relevant policy-making sources.
Still another functional kind of citizen representation may be necessary before or during the attempts at
access-attainment.
This is the citizen-involvement func-
tion of "mobilization and interest arousal."
This function
is aimed at spreading the word in the community, making
people aware of their common problems or desires and the potentials for finding solutions.
Operations here involve com-
munications of a public relations nature, mobilizing community
groups and individuals on a variety of interests or issues.
Leaders, or mobilizers, are ideally able to act like public relations men, arousing hope and enthusiasm in all possible
quarters.
This kind of citizen involvement is. "successful"
if it makes people aware and encourages their active commitment; the more people aware and the more committed they are,
the more "successful" the process.
Another function of citizen representation, which
could go on simultaneously with or independent of the other
functions, is "political learning and power-building." This
is a two-pronged function.
The learning part concerns people
in the community, and their learning to perceive and use political opportunities.
The power-building part extends to
finding or creating openings in the existing power structure.
Operationally, the function is to build up community feelings
of potency and familiarity with political tactics.
At the
13.
power-structure level, the operative tactic is to make the
potent or influential
community visible as a politically
or influential force.
The community's dredibility in this
sense will largely depend on it's political learning and capability of being mobilized.
Citizen participation leaders
here might well be politicians;
they must be politically a-
dept and some sort of charismatic quality would probably be
an ideal asset.
The "success" of this citizen participation
function is guaged in terms of the political impact it can
exert.
This might be in terms of program achievements, but
what I have primarily in mind, is a political impact in terms
of a new community power position
-
-
for instance, a commun-
ity-run "little City Hall", or a community representative to
a city council or city agency.
Thus, citizen representation might serve a number of
different functions: program achievement, access, mobilization,
political power-building or learning.
The function appro-
priate to a locality would depend on that locality's foremost
needs, and the larger political context.
Success is of a diff-
erent sort for each function, and the operating orientation for
citizen participants is also different.
2.
Tactics and Working Modes of Citizen Involvement.
Citizen involvement has a number of possible func-
tions, and the exact reasons for having such participation
vary accordingly.
Beyond these basic functions, however, are
the questions of just how participation can come about, and
14.
the tactics and working modes that seem to be the most important points to look for in any specific cases.
Citizen participation must start with some impetus
or organizing effort.
There are general considerations that
can be made for all the possible kinds of participation.
For instance, a problem in any case is likely to be disinterest
or apathy; people in the community must think action has real
chances for success.
Agitation and conflict tactics are some-
times important in this sense, since they can give the people
a bAsis for hope that by fighting together they may scord
some successes.
The existence of issues, things that people
care about, is also important, although conceivably the issue
that can stir interest could be of various dimensions.
Still
another ingredient to continuing interest might be some visible results.
Saul Alinsky, for instance, works for small vic-
tories along the way to bigger ones, to aid a sense of "solidarity and elan." 2
Over and above these initial needs to arouse interest,
there are a-number of general aspects that can characterize a
sort of descriptive context for citizen representation.
These
fall roughly into two categories: structural or formal elements, and informal elements.
Structural characteristics of
particular importance will be the formal provisions of power
and resources given a citizen group.
In a government program
this includes votes, vetas, money, staff, or so on.
lCharles E. Silberman, "Up from Apathy--the Woodlawn
Experiment", Commentary XXXVII (May, 1964) , p. 55
2 Ibid.,
p. 56.
15.
The most relevant informal features can cover a
wide range, from citizen capabilities to broad social and
political conditions.
The average residents' capabilities
to "participate" successfully will depend on time, experience, and the skills needed for the particular citizeninvolvement functions to be performed.
Unlike the political
and other professionals with whom they will have to deal,
the community people lack resources for organized activity
of this kind: their time is taken by jobs, and they may also
lack money
for transportation or baby-sitting.
They may not
have a necessary psychological orientation toward planning
for the future; they certainly do not have the technical or
political skill that the professionals have spent years developing.
Add so, the thing for community organizing is to
work out a feasible, yet politically significant role for
the residents.
Over time, increasing familiarity with power
might well make resident-participantsmore adept at amateur
politics.
Haggstrom observes that when people in poverty
neighborhoods become involved in successful social action in
their own behalf, "their psychological orientation does extend over a greater period of time, their feeling of helplessness does lessen, their skills and activities do gradu&lly
And, in any community, there are likely to be some
change.
individuals already experience-d in professional political or
technical capacities.
3
Warren C. Haggstrom, "The Power of the Poor," in
Riessman, Frank, et. al. (ed.'s), Mental Health of the Poor
(N. Y.: The Free Press, 1964) . p. 208.
16.
Another informal element to consider in all cases
is the existing political situation, in terms of attitudes
and commitments and openings in and around the formal
political structures.
Conceivably, initial encouragement
by the political powers-that-be may spur residents to positive action or cynicism or hostility.
Long-run effects,
once organization has begun in the community, are another
area for conjecture: can or will the political powers kepp
up with rising community demands?
a new power
-
-
Can or will they tolerate
or be overwhelmed by it?
The general context for citizen participation can thus
be described by looking at structural and informal political
resources and capabilities.
Another whole area of concern,
however, is tactics and working modes.
In fact, many de-
scriptions of citizen participation processes emphasize
tactics, rather than the functions of participation as I have
done.
Tactics are usually described in terms of possibilities
along a range of increasing citizen responsibility or control.
At the low end of the range are citizen advisory boards, then
perhaps, groups with some power to initiate or veto.
Con-
tinuing along the range, groups could cooperate in decision
or design with official powers.
Further along, they could
take more responsibility for design and control, up to a
point where the citizen group makes all final decisions or
designs.
This sort of range characterizes citizen groups who
17.
are playing a political power game inside or in cooperation with the existing political powers.
Still another
dimensional possibility would be for a citizens' group to
play an outsiders' game of conflicting or competitive
operations.
This happens, for instance, when a community
group hires an advocate planner to design a program to opp se or replace a government program.
The modus operandi
or political game which a group chooses to play, will depend
on its needs, and the opportunities (structural and informal)
that lie in the existing political system.
Once they have chosen or begun a mode of operation, a
group must still have some focus or substance to operate on
or around.
These could be key substantive issues, or specific
organizational tasks; in short, it could be some manifestation
of the reasons or needs for having citizen participation. The
importance of having focal issues arises from their nature as
mobilizing and organizing forces.
The absence or lack of fo-
cus on such matters may make citizen participation more diffuse and less capable of "success".
The available or potential resources for citizen representation arise from the structural and informal context,
but resource use is a tactical matter that can greatly determine
ultimate success or failure.
In terms of citizen participa-
tion, resource use and deployment can be described in terms of
five themes that are likely to emerge in the participation process.
These are:
18.
A)
A division of labor. The use or non use of tactics to
divide labor or responsibilities is especially important where there are a number
of topics of concern.
And, it is perhaps most critical where the citizen
representation purpose is program-achievement.
It
is likely to be related to the existence or non-existence of focal issues,
since labor can only be
divided where tasks can be specified and differentiated.
B)
The use or role of professionals;
Professionals, in
staff or advisory capacities, can aid citizen participation if citizens are willing to accept their involvement.
Professional aid, however, is likely to be
useful or most useful only if the professionals are
aware of the relevat citizen participation functions,
the real reasons for having citizen Involvement in any
particular situation.
He shoUld be able to act as a
translating medium, bringing information or encouragement to the citizen group in terms relevant to their
needs.
For instance, if program achievement is the
main purpose, he should bring in relevant data and examples.
If political power-building is the purpose, he
should be a broker of political trade-off's and exhortations.
If mobilization is the purpose, he should pro-
vide public relations advice.
4 Reverend
Michael Groden, St. Joseph's Church, Roxbury, interview on March 9, 1968. Father Groden has worked with various
community groups in his area of Roxbury, and is currently spearheading a cooperative apartment development for low - and moderate-income families.
19.
C)
Yoe of communit
orgizations.
The use of existing
community organizations involves determination of who
would be interested in what aspects of participation.
This will depend on exact issues, and on the relevant
As noted earlier, for
citizen participation purposes.
instance, citizen participation serving access and mobility functions might do well to include any and all
local groups.
If the function is political power-building,
the strongest groups must be included.
For program a-
chievement, the program-oriented groups would be the ones
to include.
D)
Visibility and communication.
These aspects are impor-
tant also in all citizen involvement functions.
Again,
the best emphases or tactics will depend on the relevant
function that is to be performed.
Visibility and com-
munication are critical on two levels:
in the ccmmunity,
and at or in the larger political power structure.
E)
Power.
The- use and perception of power is tactically
important In all the citizen involvement functions,
althouzh it is most explicit in the political learning
and power-building function.
Power use and perception
Is something to be learned by experience, and the better
the learning,
the better the chances that a group will
be able to use its
potential powers.
the other thematic items,
dependent on time.
Md'ore than any of
learning about power is
greatly
20.
Thus, citizen involvement not only has -various
functions, but also a vast number of possibilities for
tactics and working modes.
Major items to consider in
analyzing a participation process include the descriptive
context of structural and informal elements.
for analysis are the exact "power game",
mode going on,
Other items
or operational
and the existence or lack of focal issues.
Finally, there are the five tactical themes involving resource use and deployment.
In the next chapter, I shall
discuss the additional context of Model Cities as a framework for citizen involvement.
ters,
Finally, in successive chap-
all these considerations will be used in analyzing
the Boston and Cambridge experiences with citizen participation in Model Cities.
21.
CHAPTER III:
CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN THE MODEL
CITIES LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK
The Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966 aims to solve some of the human urban problems, by a "total environment" attempt to orchestrate resources for improving physical, economic, social and political conditions.
"Model Cities"
(MC), as it has come to be
known, reflects an implicit assumption that enough-cities have
problems similar enough to each other, that a national program can be designed to aid them, if it is sufficiently comprehensive and flexible.
The legislation, and the guidelines
established by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
(HUD), articulate some goals, operational objectives and standards for action. 1
Included among all these are "citizen par-
ticipation" components.
The major goal, solving some "human" problems of urban
life, is to be implemented in "Model Neighborhoods" of a predominantely residential character, being "at least in part,
hard-core slums" with concentrations of low-income families. 2
The present duration of the program includes a one-year planning phase and a five-year implementation phase.
United States Congress., Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966 (Public Law 89-754); also Department of Housing and Urban Development, Program Guide to
Model Neighborhoods in Model Cities, December 1966, revised
December, 1967; also H. U. D. Community Demonstration Agency
Letters #1, 2, 3 (HUD 1967, DIR 3100. 1,2,3, October-November
1967)
21966 Guidelines, Ibid., p._6.
22.,
This main goal is supported in legislation and
guidelines by at least two major operational objectives.
One such objective is to establish broad-scope and effective programs; the other is
to delineate the real priorities
and needs of the people in the Model Neighborhoods.
It
is
this second operational objective that opens the way for
citizen involvement in the program.
Accordingly, the Model Cities legislative framework
for citizen participation consists of a number of standards
and suggestions intended to include citizen participants.
It
does not, however, distinguish among different reasons for,
or functions of, having citizen participation.
One could
gather that the main purpose for citizen involvement was
visualized to be delineating people's real needs and priorities.
This, however, is so general that it conld apply to any
of the different purposes of citizen involvement discussed in
the last chapter.
Generality can be an asset, if the program
does provide enough opportunity to apply the general framework to specific local needs for citizen participation.
In general then, it is useful to describe the legislative openings for citizen involvement in Model Cities.
The
legislation requires that a city demonstration program be
of sufficient magnitude to provide "widespread citizen participation in the program."
3
-The original Hud guidelines
stated that:
Demonstration Cities Act of 1966,
103 (a) (2).
Op Cit.,
Section
23.
-public, private, 'and neighborhood participants
should work together in analyzing neighborhood conditions
and goals;
-Planning should be done "with the people";
-The CDA should provide a "neaningful role in
policy-makingY to area residents.
These standards, however, are capable of wide interretation; in fact, taken alone, they allow the kind of loeal latitude that has helped to dilute the impact of "citizen
participation" components in the anti-poverty programs.
In
the latter there have been wide differences between legislative promise and practical reality:
representation of the
poor on policy boards has often been only symbolic, providing
real involvement for only a few; those participating have often
lacked any real constituency capable of exerting effective
pressures; active participants have, in many cases, been drawn
only from the upper strata of the community. 5
Although these difficulties are endemic to any community
action attempt; stricter legislative guidelines might help.
The situation for Model Cities is somewhat improved by HUD's revised Guidelines and performance standards.
These require de-
velopment of the means of introducing residents' views in policy
making, through some organizational structure that:
-
6
-Embodies neighborhood residents in program planning and.
implementation;
41966 Guidelines, op. cit.,
pp.
11-14,
36.
5 Sherry
Arnstein, "Citizen Participation--Rhetoric and
Reality:, draft memo for staff discussions, Department of
Housing and Urban Development, March 27, 1967.
6 Community
Demonstration Agency Letter #3,,op. cit.,
"Performance Standards for Citizen Participation"
24.
-Has a leadership composed of "persons whom neighborhood residents accept as representing their interests";
-Has "clear and direct access to the decision-making
process of the CDA so that neighborhood views can influence
...decisions";
-Has sufficient inform ation, and for a sufficient
amount of time, to be able to react knowledgeably and initiate proposals;
-Is provided with some form of professional technical
assistance.
Ideally, programs would combine operational efficiency
with real citizen participation to develop an effective plan.
In practical terms, however, the objectives of effective programming and resident participation are potentially in conflict: the broader the arena of "participation", the more
difficult it may be to develop polished, comprehensive programs.
And, if we consider "effectiveness" in the sens.e of resource
allocation, it seems obvious that "people's" judgements can
differ from "expert" ones
-
-
there will be inevitable prob-
lems, both over who can judge what's best, and who should
judge what's best.
Even if residents are influential enough
to succeed in pressing their wants, there is no guarantee that
their wants are equivalent to their needs.
Thus, at their
worst, the two objectives are mutually constraining.
On the
other hand, at their best, they might succeed in reinforcing
each other: real program achievements can encourage effective I
participation, which can in turn, lead to new successes.
Looking at MC as a vehicle for the various possible
types of citizen participation, we can spot a number of critical constraints and potential difficulties which recall the
25.
elements discussed earlier.
The way in which community
action is initiated, and the participants' use of power
and resources, are in large part shaped by the MC program
per se.
First, there are the built-in constraints of a
Federal program, setting limits on time and money.
The
first such round of constraints was the time deadline for
submitting proposals by May 1, 1967; the second round covers
the planning year under way in 1967-68.
In fact, the pressure
for some kind of visible progress comes well before that year
is through, in anticipation of Congress' appropriations scheduling which begins in May for the coming fiscal year.
A co-
incidental pressure is added for each locality by virtue of the
fact that appropriations for the next phase, implementation,
are to be made on a competitive basis.
As Federal spending
continues to be strained by war costs, some cities who have
gone through the whole planning year could find further funds
sharply decreased or possibly curtailed completely.
The citi-
zen participation process exacerbates these pressures in two
major ways.
It makes planning and decision-making more complex
and time-consuming.
And, it raises the potential irony of
raising community expectdtions and hopes in face of decreasing
availability of funds.
The time and money constraints are formalized in the.
prograi requirements.
Within twelve months after approval of
the initial planning grant, each city must submit a number of
specified documents.
One of these is a "first-year action
program in full detail", to contain. among other things, a
26.
description of each planned activity in terms of affected
population, specific content, costs, funding sources, and
so on. 7
But, since each local program is over-seen by a
HUD regional office, it is possible that the time constraint
can be adjusted to meet the needs of particular cities.
So,
the required statements may vary with respect to "'precision
and refinement." 8 And, in a less formalized sense, the fate
of programs in individual cities may depend largely on the
good will and orientation of the Federal administrators. 9
A city that can make a good case for itself may be able to
concentrate on some program aspects at the expense of others,
and structure its planning and action programs according to
local needs even if they do not coordinate precisely with the
Federal guidelines for submitting certain kinds of programs
at certain times.
Another set of challenges is related to the matters of
residents' capabilities and their best feasible role for participating in MC programs.
Although the MC standards enumerate
minimal requirements, the actual substance of citizen involvement can vary enormously.
Variation enters with the way in
which participating residents are selected, and the attitudes
taken toward them by their own community as well as by local
professional and political participants.
The required "clear
and direct access" to decision-making can vary in manner and
7 Community
Demonstration Agency Letter #1, op. cit.,
Model City Planning Requirements", par. 2.1.2-2.1.7, and par 5.3.
8 Ibid.,
9 Bernard
par.
2.3.
J. Frieden, class lecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, February 9, 1968.
27.
effectiveness, depending on how decision resources are distributed and used.
On this score, the provisions for time,
information, and technical assistance to residents may be
necessary ingredients, but still not sufficient for resident
influence.
In practice, residents might end up working at
any point along a whole range of possible influence: consenting to plans, negotiating or bargaining with city politicians
and professionals, joint planning with them, taking full control of part or all of a plan.
What really happens in any lo-
cality will depend on the structured arrangements, official
and professional attitudes, and residents' capabilities and
attitudes.
In other words, community action under MC will have
the same complexities as elsewhere.
Here, too, there are the
added necessities of Federal time and monetary constraints,
but also the potential benefits of well-administered Federal
guidelines.
A related and equally critical dimension is the local
orientation to process and product as two distinct kinds of
activity.
"Process" refers to the development of effective
resident participation; by "product", we refer to the development of concrete programs. In other words, concern with
"process" would be appropriate especially where the functions
of citizen participation are to mobilize and arouse interest,
or to build political learning and power-bases.
"Product" em-.
phasis would be most important if the major function of citizen participation is to structure program achievements.
28.
Those who design and initially influence a local MC
program could conceivably emphasize either process or product, or both, and remain within appropriate legislative
real ms.
Similarly, the participating residents could opt
for either or both.
This choice ofemphasis need not be a
conscious one, or even one perceived by any of the parties.
Nonetheless, the success of the citizen participation that
actually emerges may in great part
depend on taking the ap-
propriate orientation to process or product.
Ideally, Model
Citiest success depends on both process and product, and the
optimum strategy is one that develops concrete MC programs at
the same time as it establishes the kind of citizen participation functions appropriate to local needs.
Thus, the resi-
dents' feasible role must be found in some balance or tradeoff between process and product.
Another critical element mentioned earlier
was the
narrow-sense "representation" aspect of any community action
program.
"Representation" in this narrow sense
refers to the
kind of citizen involvement whereby specific interests are represented in program design and achievement.
MC guidelines ex-
plicitly require a structure including resident leadership composed of persons whom residents "accept as representing their
interests".
This is one means of assuring that at least some
neighborhood interests are represented, but it does not stipu-late how:
groups?
by election at large?
by appointees of neighborhood
And, as noted earlier, creating a truly "representative"
group may be virtually impossible.
Although well-intentioned,
29.
this "guideline" could conceivably foster costly obstructions, diverting everyone's attention to an intra-community
battle to determine the "true"'_representatives.
Finally, the general local political context for resident action in MC.should be considered.
The focal point here,
is the role of city government in a program initiated and adhinistered by the Federal government.
Earlier Federal-city
programs have been administered along agency lines, so that
different city departments tended to have links with different
Federal ones.
These links fostered inter-agency constituenckes;
local elected officials such as the Mayor could be bypassed, and
practically speaking, over-ruled.
And, the inter-agency com-
petition and lack of coordination that takes place anyway at
local and Federal levels is further exacerbated.
The MC program differs from others in that it attempts
comprehensive coordination of all relevant agencies at all government levels, and centralized local control is vested in city
hall.
The precedent for this Federal turn toward the elected
local officials
poverty Bill.
was the Green Amendment to the 1967 AntiThis measure
required a
city hall to t.ake charge
of all local community action programs, either by running the
programs itself or by choosing a private agency to do so.
In
effect, then, the mayor's office can no longer be by-passed by
local agencies running Federal anti-poverty programs.
This is,.
such a turn-about that opponents of the Amendment called it
"bossism", a real concession to big city mayors.
10
10Joseph A. Loftus, "Antipoverty Bill Derided in House",
The New York Times, November 8, 1967, 20:1.
30.
If
one side of MC politics thus puts power back into
the idayor's hands, it also tempers that power.
Since
cities must compete for funds, each city must be able to
pvove the merits of its case, by coming up with effective
programs and some kind df citizen participation arrangement.
Assessing local programs is cone at Federal regional and
central offices; MC gives enough leverage to regional officers to encourage cities to deal through them, and regional
administers can thereby keep at least some watch on each locality.
Another side of MC politics is the relationship between
city governments and resident participants.
MC is at least
partly structured to stress needs of low-income groups, as
voiced by those groups.
For instance, proposed MC areas had
to be fairly large, one reason for this being that in a larger
area there was more likely to be stronger local political
weight behind residents' desires.
Also, MC performance stan-
dards make the city govern~'ment responsible for insuring that
administrative and organizational structure provides for effective citizen participation, with residents "fully involved in
policy-making, planning and the execution of all program elements."ill
In effect, MC tries to steer a felicitous course between
local city government control and citizen participation.
And
there is still another potential problem: successful citizen
Community Demonstration Agency Letter #3,
op.
cit.
31.
participation raises a competitive power base which constitutes a natural threat to any present power-holders.
Anticipation of this turn of events can dampen even the
most enthusiastic local politician, who may hope to- use
MC to his own and the community's advantage, but must also
fear its' getting out of hand.
In summary, the.-MCoobjectives of building effective
Programs and delineating people's real needs seem to have
the potential to be either conflicting or mutually reinforcing.
The aspect of delineating needs is a direct invitation
to citizen participation, although there is no distinction
made among the various possible purposes of such participation.
MC community action, in addition, will labor.under program
constraints of time and money.
And, although there is guaran-
teed access to some of the channels and resources for decisionmaking, practical outcomes will depend on residents' abilities
to use these opportunities, and the ways in which they are extended in the local program.
It will also depend on all par-
ties' orientation to process and/or product; and on the way
"representation" in the narrow sense is handled; and on the local political context in general.
All of these factors will combine to shape citizen participation in a different way for each locality.
And, since
citizen action has different purposes, it remains to be seen
whether or not a locality can visualize the purposes needed locally, and then integrate that sort of citizen involvement into
its' Model Cities operation.
32.
CHAPTER IV:
MODEL CITIES UNDERWAY ;--
THE BOSTON PROGRAM
Citizen participation has a number of possible
functions, any or all of which could be undertaken by a
city as part of a Model Cities program.
The huge variety
of program concerns in Model Cities tends to make "policy/
program achievement" the most obvious function for citizen
involvement, but as I have pointed out, that function may
often be practicable only after the access, mobilization, and
power-building have been begun.
Boston's Model Cities op-
eration is a good illustration of this dilemma.
Within the
Boston Model Neighborhood, there were needs for access and the
other functions as well
-
-
but the overwhelming emphasis was
placed on a policy/program achievbment function nonetheless.
This came about as a result of the general Model Cities framework in Boston, which established the residents' Neighborhood
Board as a body whose job was to formulate policy and programs.
In describing the Boston scene, I am not attempting a
comprehensive study of all the local MC matters.
Rather, the
concern is with whatever seemed directly relevant to citizen
participation in terms of its appropriate functions and
chances for "success" in fulfilling those functions.
The de-
scription begins with background material about political and
professional renewal experience in Boston, then moves on to a
discussion of the Model Neighborhood's character and needs.
Next, the structural and informal aspects of Boston's Model
Cities set-up is brought out as it concerns citizen involve-
33.
ment.
Finally, the study turns to modes of working opera-
tion; and resource deploytiient in terms of the five themes
suggested earlier, and an assessment of the chances for
successful citizen participation in Model Cities.
1.
Boston Model Cities' Heritage and Inception
The Boston MC program had emerged as a remarkably open
one, in terms of official desires to extend communications
and resources directly to people in the Model Neighborhood.
This condition did not come about overnight.
It came from a
combination of long years of redevelopment experience, alert
community leaders, and a Federal MC proposal deadline that
propitiously coincided with major shifts in the unique political system that is Boston's.
The story of Boston's redevelopment experience is an
elaborate one that can barely be summarized here.
However,
the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA)is relevant here because it established much of the context for citizen participation in Boston programs.
That context can be described by
a brief review of- the three aspects of the BRA story.
First,
there was the fact of BRA emergence as a power structure and
lFor instance, see these theses involving various aspects of BRA experience: Nancy Rita Arnone, "Redevelopment in
Boston:
A Study of the Politics and Administration of Social
Change," Department of Political Science, M. I. T., PhD (February, 1965); Langley Carlton Keyes, Jr., "The Rehabilitation
Planning Game: A Study in the Diversity of Neighborhood", Department of City and Regional Planning, M.I.T. PhD (January,
1967); Dwight E. Flowers, "Neighborhood Renewal in Context:
Project Impact in Adjacent Areas", Department of City and Regional Planning, M. I.T., MCP (June' 1967).
34.
and catalyst for change and community involvement.
Second,
there were the public reactions to urban renewal, and the
resulting mobilization of resident interests.
Third, there
were the residents' "mandate groups" officially included
in BRA operations.
These three aspects of experience helped
to condition the structural and informal setup., that was to
emerge for citizen participation in Model Cities.
Theifirst aspect was BRA emergence as a power structure
and catalyst for change.
This began with the election of
John Collins as Mayor in 1959.
Collins had chosen urban re-
newal as the keynote of his administration.
Together with
Edward J. Logue, who had already acquired a magical renewal
reputation in New Haven, Collins succeeded in fashioning a new
and comprehensive framework for Boston's planiing and renewal.
Collins and Logue incorporated the old Planning Board into a
restructured Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), with full
authority to propose and implement renewal programs, designing
long-range plans and comprehensive capital improvement programs.
The BRA emergence has been aptly characterized as a dynamic
catalyst of change, injected in a political-bureaucratic
system previously habituated to low performance and loose in2
tegration.
Logue was not only an efficient technician and expert grantsman, but a political pi'agmatist and a man of action;
with Logue as its Development Administrator, the BRA's new
functions could be carried out with a forceful combination of
2 Arnone,
Ibid., pp. 253-5 and passim.
35.
efficiency, political- and technical skill.
Logue's style of operation was a compendium of innovation, skill and resources, and the capability to use all
three to political advantage.
The BRA rapidly became Boston's
largest, and probably most active, agency.
Projects and ac-
tion were quick to emerge; by 1963, Boston had risen from 17th
to 4th in the amount of Federal money reserved for individual
city's renewal efforts.
3
BRA successes, in turn, lead to the
emergence of a new political pattern in Boston.
Nancy Arnone
described this pattern in terms of three focal elements of a
new power structure:
(1) The BRA itself, with resources of money, and technical and political skill;
(2) Mayor Collins, a "transition" figure between olds,tyle politics and modern efficiency, who, at the outset
was able to avoid direct conflicts and still maintain
his power to legitimize outcomes;
(3) A business and financial elite willing to back
efforts to get money and action into the Boston scene.
With this impetus, Boston's renewal program was well under way
by the mid-1960's.
By then, however, the serious problems of urban renewal
had emerged in Boston and residents were mobilized in reaction.
The powerhouse strength and rapidity with which projects were
begun could not be matched in project completion. Areas that
had been rapidly cleared, could not be so rapidly rebuilt, and
the Federal programming for separate "planning" and "execution"
phases exacerbated the lags between present reality and future'
3
4
Ibid., p. 58.
ibid., p. 258 and passim.
36.
promise.
Low-income residents, having daily survival troubles
anyway, got the worst end of a situation over which they, of
all groups, had the least control.
Dislocated, facing empty
or rubble-filled lots where once there had been friends and
familiar places, residents' reactions were often bitter and,
cynical.
In many areas, physical renewal came to mean hurman
removal, and the BRA name signified an inhumane bulldozer.
Almost by virtue of its very efficiency,
fallen into dis'repute in many quarters.
the BRA had
Redevelopment had be-
come a focus for controversy, a subject for major political
conflicts and public anxiety.
In Roxbury, part of which con-
stituted the Washington Park renewal area, reaction and controversy erupted in 1966.
At a community rally, residents voiced
resistance to BRA "tactics" and dislocation; in the non-renewal
sections of Roxbury, conditions were worse than ever and dissatisfactions stronger than ever. 5
For Mayor Collins, who had been its champion, renewal
was now a political liability.
bilized in response to renewal.
The public could clearly be moCollins' bid for a Senate nom-
ination in September of 1966 was rejected by the voters, the
largest anti-Collins vote occuring in and around Washington Park.
Collins turned to tend his political fires, and Logue was left
to hold the renewal fort alone.
In short, by 1967 the BRA experience had brought the most
critical urban renewal issues to Boston.
5 Flowers,
In the process, a new,
op. cit., passim. Flowers makes an elaborate and
convincing analysis of urban renewal effects on adjacent areas,
showing that the Washington Park project was the cause of rapidly
intensifying social and economic problems in the surrounding adjacent areas.
6 1bid.,
pp. 103-108.
37.
power structure was established in the BRA, but it had to
deal with rising community reactions and resident involvement
in official processes.
Thus, the city officials and also the
residents were learning that citizen invo-lvement could take
various functional forms: it could obstruct, mobilize, even
wield solid political power.
There was also the third aspect: The BRA's official use
of citizen participation in a public planning operation.
A
structured role for citizen participation arose from the necessity of mobilizing support for urban renewal projects, and Collins'
expectation that "planning with people" would be part of any renewal process.
Thus, even prior to public hearing, a citizen
"mandate team" would negotiate with the BRA to work out a plan
suitable to its area's needs.
Langley Keyes explained that,
...No public hearing would be held on the.. .plan until
the mandate organization has given its formal public
assent to the plan. The mandate group legitimizes the
renewal plan for the neighborhood and provides the formal arena within which differenc s of opinion can be resolved and conflict neutralized.
Keyes goes on to comment on the importance of having a
mandate team that includes representatives of all interests influential enough to mobilize local support for or against renewal.
In other words, the BRA lesson was that there are ways
to plan with people, and that the way to get good results is to
make certain the right people are planned with.
Furthermore, the
exact "result" being aimed at determines, in large part, who the
"right" people are.
7 For
The original mandate group for Washington
example, see Keyes, op. cit., pp. 498-502, and passim.
8 Ibid.,
p. 83.
38.
Park would have been "right" had the only important result
been the sphysical changes in Washington Park itself; in overall terms, however, the target result probably should have
included satisfactory provision for the dislocatees
-
-
and
accordingly, the mandate group should have included an advocate of their inter.ests from the first.
All this had transpired in Boston when the Model Cities
opportunity arose early in 1967.
To make application in time
for the May deadline, an area of sufficient need had to be defined and the elaborate "proposal" (a bureaucratic requirement)
written up.
The greatest physical and social needs in Boston
were still in all of Roxbury and also the South End, but these
easily constituted 20% of Boston's population, and the Guidelines made 10% the maximum. Accordingly, the two portions already designated as renewal areas, Washington Park and the South
End, were deleted, leaving a doughnut-shaped Model Neighborhood
with Washington Park as its center and the South End as one outside border.
Adjacent portions of Jamaica Plain and North Dor-
chester were added to make a 2000-acre doughnut.
These added a
larger white population, bringing it to 47% of the MN total of
62,000 people.
The MN overlapped portions of 3 of the eleven
city poverty target areas, and partly bordered the Jamaica Plain
code enforcement area.
Although formally excluded, Washington
Park was having serious social problems and it was anticipated
that it would share in the overspilling benefits of MC social
programs.
39.
In essence, Logue had milked the Federal MC resource
possibilities for all he could, maximizing the area and population, and hoping to stretch at least some benefits to the
25,000 people in Washington Park.
Hopefully, also, having a
large area meant that the most precarious sub-areas were included, at least in part miti-gating the bad spill-overs that
came with smaller project areas in urban renewal..The large
population might swing political weight for or against an administration;
its very size and diversity would certainly com-
plicate the "resident participation" aspect.
Since Logue was
also a potential candidate for Mayor in that Spring of 1967, he
must have especially weighed these potential liabilities and
anticipated some means of swinging them in the right direction.
The mayorality race, in which Logue was to be only one
of eighteen candidates, provided the backdrop for the way in
which the Boston MC proposal received its final formulation.
This general political backdrop was especially opportune for
new citizen involvement, for two reasons.
First, the political
situation was in a fluid state, ripe for openings and shifts of
power.
Second, the community had residents willing and able
to take the initiative and bid for power at the right time.
The fluid political situation revolved around Collins' decline in popularity.
The coming November elections for Mayor
were already being eyed by a whole range of hopefuls, including
along with Logue, several members of the City Council and the
School Committee.
Boston politics went on as usual, with people
jockeying for position against the backdrop of ethnic enclaves
40.
and equally ensconced bureaucratic enclaves.
Now, how-
ever, there was added incentive for making a good, or at
least not a bad, public showing on any important issues.
One
such issue was the whole ghetto problem, Roxbury being the
center of especially controversial aspects in school policy
and urban renewal., Since Model Cities was one way of exhibiting a sincere effort to solve some of the ghetto problems,
members of the City Council in
this election year were in1'
terested in helping Boston to be one of the prestigious chosen
cities.
Although the substance of the MC proposal was being
prepared by the BRA and ABCD (Boston's antipoverty Agency),
City Council would have to pass on the application, and it was
likely to be interested in quiet negotiation on any controversial matters that might dilute the beneficial aura of the
official proposal.
Thus, on April 2, when the MC proposal was ready for
Council approval and submission to Washington, a community conference was held in what was to be the MC area, for the purpose of resident review of the proposal as written by BRA and
ABCD.
Residents were aware of the political opportunities, and
readily "participated."
Inspired by the efforts of Thomas Atkins,
an influential community leader, and Reverend Donald Campbell of
Jamaica Plain, participants at the conference focused their
attention on the proposed mechanisms for community participation.
This was covered in the ABCD draft by a provision for citizen
advisory meetings to "react and recommend with respect to
planning."
Although this was well within the Guidelines format,
41.
it was not sufficient as far as the Campbell-Atkins forces
were concerned, and the other conference participants agreed..
Accordingly, the conference voted to appoint a steering committee, to study "alternative models for a citizen-planning
body."
A second conference was convened on April 19, and residents voted approval of their own citizen planning scheme.
It
called for an 18 - member Neighborhood Board (NB) to be elected
from the MC area, with three members from each of six neighborhoods.
The Board was to have its own funds for staff or other
work, and some key powers: to initiate as well as review MC
plans, and to exercise a line veto in the finished plan.
The final step was the City Council hearing on the MC
proposal.
After the initial hearings, there came a day-long
deliberation in the Mayor's Office, involving City officials
and a neighborhood group headed by Atkins.
Council finally
approved the MC proposal with the community conference version
of citizen participation included.
In its resolution, the
Council also provided for a minimum sum of $35,000) to be given
the Neighborhood Board; this was a means of assuring a set amount
for the Board in the likely event that the Federal appropriation
to Boston would be less than the total requested amount of
$250,000.
Now Boston was ready for action.
The Board elections were
held in August, drawing more than 12% of the community to the
9
Boston Model Neighborhood Board, "A Preliminary
Report," mimeo, no date, p. 1.
42.
polls. 1 0 By November, Boston had a new mayor in Kevin White.
In a close race, White had defeated Mrs. Louise Day Hicks, a
vociferous proponent of the "neighborhood schools" concept
that favored keeping all children (including black ones) close
inside their own neighborhoods (including slum ones).
White
pledged to give people and their problems the highest priority,
and close on the heels of his
election
came Washington's ap-
roval of Boston's MC bid.
2. The Model Neighborhood and the Relevant
Functions of Citizen Participation
The aims of Boston's MC proposal reflected the whole
range of physical and social needs for which the legislation
was intended.
The point of the whole thing, especially,
"citizen participation", was to make the city livable for people
to make agencies and opportunities relevant and responsive to
the people's needs.
This had been a leading theme at least as
early as the community conference, at which BRA staff members
expected that residents could "begin to participate", and "define 'community control'". 1 The real enormity of the task, however, becomes apparent in looking more closely at the character
and needs of the proposed Model Neighborhodd.
The kind of citi-
zen participation or representation relevant to Boston's MC
can be discussed after a brief description of the area.
1 0 Ibid.,
p. 2. The same report further notes that 12%
"compares favorably" with regular city election turnouts, and is
significantly higher than the rate for "war on poverty" board
eflections.
' Janet Riddel, "Model City Residents Object to Downtowners,"
The Boston Globe, April 2, 1967, 53:1.
The MN doughnut included some of the worst Roxbury
areas along with some more transitional adjacent sections of
town.
A statistical comparison of the whole MN with the
whole of Boston describes a situation of massive poverty and
decline in the MN.
On thie other hand, conditions vary widely
among the sub-areas.
Numerical population figures are rapidly outdated by
the pace of events, which have caused ilarge population shifts
and accelerated physical decline in some sections over the
few years just prior to MC beginnings.
ated,
As Flowers had indic-
much of the change could be attributed to the urban re-
newal activity in Washington Park and the South End.
The
most "disadvantaged" portion of Washington Park's population
moved southeast to what was to become MC Area 6, and parts of
Area 5, accelerating the gradual southeastward shift of Boston's black people which had been going on for years.
The re-
newal dislocatees were largely low-income, lacking organizing
or unifying social institutions, bringing along a corresponding range of social problems.
Some of these also moved north-
ward into lower Roxbury, which was already experiencing an influx of "undesirables" who had fled the South End's skid row.
Lower Roxbury accounted for MC Area 3, and parts of Area 2.
These pressures accentuated and complicated the existing differences among all the sub-areas which were to become
part of the Model Neighborhood.
the area finally
chosen,
As the Proposal stated, in
44.
...there is the opportunity for real racial harmony
on the one hand, and, on the other, the chance that
without a strong effort to improve bonditions, the
area will deteriorate so badly that increased interracial tension could conceivably result. 2
A brief characterization of the physical personalities
of the neighborhoods conveys the impression that the Proposal
understated its case, to say the least.
Jamaica Plain, com-
prising Area 1, had a mix of stable, attractive, middle-income
residences, and a growing number of low - and no-income accomodations.
Part of Area 1 was in a code enforcement area, in-
dicating the need for less-than-renewal improvement of substandard housing and facilities.
It teetered on potential
"deterioration, rapid racial change and property abandonment
unless there is considerable effort to stabilize the area. "3
Area 2
was even more heterogeneous.
It had stable areas, but
also some of the worst of physical conditions; there were vacant and rubble-strewn lots, buildings in various stages of
abandonment and decay or destruction, empty and deteriorating
places of business and residence.
The Madison Park sections,
in Areas 2 and 3, were similarly physically blighted, and contained some of the most dire poverty in the city.
Also in Area
3, there was Orchard Park, a large housing project whose stark
instititional character contrasted sharply with the scene of
delapidation and abandonment surrounding it.
- Office of the Mayor, City of Boston, Application to the
Department of Housing and Urban Development for a Grant t'o Plan
a Comprehensive City Demonstration Program, April 27, 19b7,
Part II, B, p. 2.
3 Ibid.,
p. 5.
45.
Area 4, like Area 1, boasted attractive middle-income
sections threatened by potential deterioration and rapid
racial overturn.
Areas 5 and 6 were also mixtures, housing
many of Boston's upwardly mobile middle-class blacks, as well
as many of its most poverty-stricken, including the renewal
dislocatees.
Grove Hall - Blue Hill Avenue, a busy service
and commercial section, boasted a number of antipoverty organizations and community service groups, many of them uprooted from Washington Park.
As in the physical environment, the social environment.
and community activity varies greatly from sub-area to subarea.
Before going into these differences, it is possible to
characterize the MC area in general as having a vibrant community life.
With a population larger than many small towns,
the "Neighborhood" could and did
possess literally hundreds
of organized groups interested in the civic, social, economic,
cultural, and recreational life of the community.
The April,
1967 conference had been no mere collection of residents, but
rather a gathering of 300 residents representing local organizations. Over and beyond the outside-sponsored groups abounding in the MN, there were over sixty black self-help groups
that had been formed over the last few years alone.
To mention
only a -few: there was "Operation Exodus," which as one of its
activities, bused over 950 black children from Roxbury to other
school districts in 1967-68; Circle Associates, a group of
young black professionals interested in joint entrepreneurial
46.
ventures; Grove Hall-Community Development Corporation, an
umbrella organization for a number of agencies undertaking
the renaissance of an exceptionally deteriorated 35-block
area.
This community activism can be the basic strength of
"citizen involvement" in a government-sponsored program such
as Model Cities.
As a resource in this sense, the kinds and
degrees of interest and activism vary greatly from sub-area to
sub-area in the Model Neighborhood.
This variation reflects
some of the social and economic differences that exist among
sub-areas as well.
In other words, in these terms, the sub-
areas afe differentially conditioned for the possibility of involving existing groups or individuals as participants in Model
Cities.
Similarly, the functions of citizen participation ap-
propriate to these conditions also vary from area to area.
These differences can be seen in a brief look at the active
groups and the elected Board members in each area.
Area 1 had strong church and civic organizations, group
activity being largely dominated by the large proportion of
white homeowners living in the area.
As part of Jamaica Plain,
the Area was also in the Jamaica Plan APAC territory.
This
APAC was one of the more active, well-organized APACs in the
City.
Conceivably, it would have been able to organize a num-
ber of community interests to work on different Model Cities
tasks.
Two of the Area 1 Board representatives also reflected
organizational ability and political dexterity.
One of them,
Reverend Donald Campbell, had been a prime mover in organizing
47.
the April Community Conference.
A second was an ex-
perienced City politician, having served on City Council
and in various political appointeeships.
The third Board
member, an active union man, had mainly union and fraternal
organization experience.
Area 2.was as mixed socially as it was physically.
The active organizations included long-established settlement houses, newer neighborhood improvement organizations,
and an even newer Lower Roxbury Community Corporation.
As
Model Cities got under way, a Harvard University-sponsored
group, Urban Field Service, was working to organize Area 2
This activity was being worked
to respond to Model Cities.
out under the legitimizing sponsorship of Area 2's Board
members.
These three people all had experience based in com-
munity-betterment organizations.
School,
One was active in the New
a vigorous black self-help operation.
The other two"
both served on the Roxbury Community Conference for Urban Renewal; one was also an experienced social service worker, and
the other served on APAC and as president of a neighborhood
association.
In Area 3, the dominant focus for group activity was in
the two housing projects
-
-
even though dominating, however,
this was -weak, as far as activism) organization, and mobilizing
ability was concerned.
Project residents had weak tenants' or-
ganizations, and non-project residents of the Area had little
if any social connection with them.
In fact, the three Area
48.
3 Board members were all residents of the larger project.
All three had group organization and action experience, but
at different scales:
one was the project tenants' associ-
ation president and also on APAC;
another was active in Head-
start, and in health and neighborhood improvement groups. The
third was involved in youth activities and a consumer's organianid
zdtion ,/was a social service employee.
Although all the Area 3 representatives were concerned
to represent their Area, their natural orientation and most
numerous contacts were toward project people and project con=
cerns.
Non-project people in Area 3 lacked direct represent-
ation, and seeing to their interests would depend on the three
Board members' willingness and abilities to extend their own
connections outside the projects.
Area 4, one of the "transitional" sub-areas, similarly
had a number of organizational activities including a large
number of improvement organizations.
For instance, the Dor-
chester-Roxbury Line Improvement Association aimed at combatting blighting influences beginning to enter from adjacent
areas experiencing the influx of the black lower-class.
Area
4, however, had less of the self-help activism found in the
poorer, blacker neighborhoods; the people seemed less community-politics oriented.
The Board representatives from Area 4
reflected this apolitical tendency, at least as far as Model
Cities was concerned.
One was an officer of the Line Improve-
ment Association, a second, a member of another neighborhood
49.
betterment group, and the third, listed no group activities
at all.
This contrasted abruptly with the lists of organi-
zational activities in which Board members from other subareas were involved.
And, Area 4 was one of the two sub-
areas where the three Board members ran unopposed in the
Board elections.
In Area 5, a number of new community forces were taking
shape, mirroring the mix cf forces arising in the area as
poor blacks began to enter from Washington Park.
Along with
the in-migrants had come most of the social and civic organizations that had served them.
There were also in Area 5, new
economic and business interests forming community development
corporations, among them, the Grove Hall group.
These were of
great potential power, since they were being organized by skillful and influential young community professionals.
Still a-
nother aspect of Area 5 activity were the militant "black power"
groups beginning to use the area as a focal point.
The Area 5 Board members reflected this activism of various kinds.
All had been active in urban renewal or neighbor-
hood improvement groups; one was a member of a newly organized
business-entrepreneurial group.
Activities of the three also
reflected part of Area 5's social composition: two were collegeeducated and both active in innovative educational ventures;
the third had some post-high school education and had taught
courses in the U. S. Army.
These middle-class type activities
are representative of a part of Area 5; the growing numbers of
50.
low-income, less-educated inmigrants are a different part
of the Area's population.
Area 6 activities and representatives, as in Area 5,
reflect predominantly middle-class backgrounds and not the
lesser-endowed pori;ions of the population.
Organizations
include neighborhood betterment groups similar to those in
niost of the sub-areas.
As in Area 4, there is less political
and community activism, and the three Board members were not
opposed by any other candidates in the August elections.
All
three work at skilled professions; one of them, M. Daniel
Richardson, was college-=educated and active in broad-scope organizations including N. A. A. C. P. and the American Friends
SerVice Committee.
man,
Since Richardson was elected Board chair-
I shall be mentioning him again later.
Thus, the six sub-areas were so varied that "citizen par-
ticipation" was relevant in very different ways for each subarea.
In all the areas there were active groups, but they
differed as to the nature of their concerns, and the sector of
the community involved.
The Area 1 APAC, and the Area 2 Ur-
ban Field Service, for instance, were potentially capable of
organizing or involving their whole sub-areas.
On the other
hand, the Area 3 and Area 4 Board members would have more difficulty involving their whole sub-areas.
In Areas 4,5, and 6,
problems centered around using and involving the diversity of
groups working simultaneously in different areas of concern.
Still another manifestation of sub-area differences was
51.
in the original slate of candidates for election to the
Board.
Two sub-areas, 4 and 6, each had only three can-
didates for the three Board seats; in each of two other subareas(3 and 5), there were four people runfning for three seats.
Areas 1 and 2, on the other hand, each had a total of five
candidates.
Similarly, in the voting turnout, Area 1 had the
highest percentage of people coming out to vote; in the nocontest sub-areas, the percentage of people voting was far below the Model Cities area average.
In other words, then, for each sub-area, Model Cities
"representation" should have had different functions.
Where
all or much or a sub-area could be organized and involved, as
in Areas 1 and 2, the relevant kind of representation could
conceivably be "program achievement", or at least aim in that
direction.
On the other hand, in the Areas such as 4, 5,
and
6, where group interests were working in many different directions, the relevant kind of representation was first of all
in the "access" sense.
In these sub-areas it was of first
importance that as many of the different groups as possible be
brought into the Model Cities communications network, so that
the most interested and influential could gain access to the
processes of design and decision.
Still another kind of rep-
resentation was most relevant in Area 3, and to some degree in
Areas 4 and 6 also
-
-
this was representation functioning as a
"mobilizing" force, to arouse diverse interests, and include
them in the Model Cities concerns.
For the Model Neighborhood as a whole, still another
52.
function of citizen involvement was the most relevant.
was "political learning and power-building".
This
People in the
whole area needed to be effective, and to feel effective, and
Model Cities could be one vehicle for building that condition.
This need in the Boston Model Cities area was especially critical, due to residentst deep dissatisfactions, and the potential
for violent riots or demonstrations.
In the spring of 1967,
while the professionals in City Hall were drawing up the MC proposal, Roxbury had been a focal point for'smoldering anger that
centered especially on city welfare and education conditions.
Dr. John Spiegel, analyzing Boston along with five other large
cities, found that during that Spring, Roxbury was among the
highest in terms of residents' "discontents".
In June, the
group Mothers for Adequate Welfare (MAW) was conducting a sitin at the Grove Hall welfare office, the day was hot, there was
confusion, sudden anger, and then a riot.
In retrospect, thej
Boston Globe pinpointed the basic cause of the riot on the absence of communitation between the community and City Hall.5
At the time, polic
"excessive.tI
6
response was quick, and Spiegel believes,
To say the least,
residents were more angry than
before and feelings continued to smolder.
White's election brought some possibilities of change to
4 Carl
M. Cobb, "Expert Says Roxbury Smolders," The
Boston Globe, March 12, 1968, 27:6. The article summarizes a
lecture given by Dr. John Spiegel, Director of the Lemberg
Center for the Study of Violence at Brandeis University. Dr.
Spiegel observed the conditions in Boston, San Francisco,
Dayton, Akron, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh; beginning in the spring
of 1967, he kept up with events throughout the explosive summer.
"Mayor and the Mothers," Editorial in The Boston Globe,
March 29, 1968, 1811.
6 Cobb,
op. cit., citing Spiegel.
53.
the scene.
Spiegel, looking at Roxbury again early in 1968,
saw a "marked change" in people's attitudes toward the city
administration. 7 There was still suspicion, but also a
"wait and see", half-hopefulness toward White.
At the end
of March, MAW once again raised its grievances, and this time
found a more satisfactory city response.
Mayor White met
with the group at a Roxbury Welfare office, and spent the day
talking over their
complaints.
elected to the City Council.
And, Thomas Atkins had been
Thus, communication has begun
and the "marked change" may lead to a more workable situation all around.
On the other hand, there remain ample
reasons for residents' anger.
Conditions continue to be bad,
relationships with City Hall are delicate, progress is slow,
the situation remains volatile.
If citizen involvement through
MOdel Cities is to "succeed," it must function to provide communications and feelings of real community political effectiveness.
Thus, for the MC area as a whole, the prevailing reason
for having citizen involvement centers around the functions of
large-scale mobilization and political effectiveness.
Since
community mobilization is so important, it may be instructive
at this point, to compare the MC resident participation frameIbid.
8 All
the research and much of the writing for this
thesis was done before the assasination of Dr. Martin Luther
King on April 4, 1968. Although racial violence erupted in
major cities, the Boston scene was one of relative calm, due
largely to the Roxbury community leadership and Mayor White's
willingness to cooperate. As Mayor's Aide. Barney Frank noted,
"Last year, Tom Atkins was clubbed and arrested. This year he's
coordinating efforts at Police Headquaters." (Quoted by The
Boston Sunday Globe, April 7, 1968, 18:5)
54.
work with the kind of resident organization used by Logue's
BRA for urban renewal projects.
Although urban renewal has
physical aims and MC's a combination of physical, social,
and economic ones, the importance of citizen participation as
a mobilizing and legitimizing force is common to both urban
renewal and Model CIties.
As noted earlier, Logue's "mandate groups" served a
specific mobilizing function, and were composed of a certain
type of residents -
- those whose influence would be critical
to mobilizing support or opposition to an urban renewal plan.
As in the Washington Park episode, an
initial miscalculation
as to where influence could be mobilized could lead to trouble
later on.
And, the mandate group approach automatically ig-
nored groups or individuals who might be affected, yet could
not muster any "influence".
In addition, the mandate group
was typically composed of people representing or controlling
rather well-established community organizations.
Washington.Park:
Thus, in
Freedom House, a civic organization of over
a dozen years' experience, whose Board included "some of the
f9
most influential Jewish and Negro leaders in Massachusetts."
In Charlestown: SHOC, a new and looser organization, nonetheless firmly established in a broad grass-roots movement.
10
And, in the South End: USES, a seventy-year old settlement house
organization having connections with a: number of community organizations. 11
9 Keyes,
op. cit., pp. 379-80, and passim.
1 0 Ibid.,
passim, especially pp. 277, 457-9.
llIbid., same pages and also pp. 140-44, 152-3.
55.
The MC Neighborhood Board as a group represented almost the antithesis of the "mandate groups".
Its members
lacked organized or easily-mobilized constituencies, and they
possessed varying degrees of political-type influence and
dexterity.
In a sense, the Board should have been serving a
"mobilization" function, yet it lacked these very ingredients
that enhanced the mandate groups' ability to mobilize interest
and support.
Most critical of all, unlike members of the man-
date groups, Board members did not have at their immediate disposal, organizations or regularized networks for communicating
with the elements they were supposed to represent.
The mere
"exposure" to community pressures, that came by virtue of their
community membership )did not make up for a lack of organized
networks
to channel-those pressures.
Still
another point was that the MC area was far larger
and more diverse than any one renewal project had been. 1 2 The
economic and racial differences among MC sub-areas was reflected in the Board 4 s composition and in individual members'
orientations.
In fact, if "community pressures"
were regular-
ly channeled to Board people, the differences and divisions
would make comprehensive policy-making even more complicated
and delicate than it already was.
12
The Largest renewal pr.oject, the South End, covered
616 acres and a total population of slightly over 33,000; by
contrast, Model Cities' is 2000 acres and involves a population of 62,500.
56.
3.
The Structural and Informal Powers for
Citizen Involvement
The administrative organization for Boston's MC
effort incorporated a number of opportune. elements for strengthening citizen involvement.
It sought to take advantage of the
MC framework for city agency coordination, the experience and
skill existing in BRA and ABCD, and the recognition that the
community role can be an important one.
All revolved around
two basic organizational bodies: the Model Cities Agency (MCA)
and the Neighborhood Board.
The MCA was the official city agency responsible for
Boston's MC planning and execution, serving as the "Community
Development Agency" indicated in the MC Guidelines.
Based on
the suggestion in the original Boston proposal, the MCA was an
autonomous agency, directly responsible to the Mayor and having
the authovity to direct all city functions in the MN.
This
multi-functional authority was a direct response to the MC mandate for coordination of city agencies, and required a special
act of the State legislature.
The only major city agency which
the Mayor was unable to incorporate in the MCA was the School
Committee, notorious in Boston for its divided membership and
consequent inability to improve the deteriorating school situation.
With this exception, the MCA could act almost as a small
city hall for the MN, and in fact,
it was comparable to the fif-
teen "little city halls" being developed by Mayor White for
other parts of the city.
It could also be seen as an expanded
57.
version of Logue's staff system, in which each urban renewal area had its own decentralized field staff in a project headquarters under a project director.
This was a
functional allocation and communications set-up appropriate
to the urban renewal range of activity; similarly, the MCA
represented a functional set-up appropriate to its far more
comprehensive range of activity.
White's appointee to head the MCA was Paul Parks, a man
with well-established political power bases in the Roxbury community and in City Hall.
He was a civil engineer by profession,
and an Officer of the Boston NAACP, and had a convincing and dynamic way in front of public groups.
The fact that he was. also
black, may have symbolized the Mayor's good intentions with respect to Roxbury, since the position of MCA head was one with
high visibility to the community, the city, and the Federal overseers.
On the other hand, it would be naive to assume that
Parks' race assured either his capacity to help all elements in
the community or his popularity with different groups in the
community.
class.
Parks' ties were in Roxbury's upwardly mobile middle-
One could conjecture,however, that on the basis of his
political acumen, Parks knew a good political resource when he
saw it, and that resource may well have been in the influence
of the entire rallied black community, if it could. be rallied.
His working philosophy included a desire to promote community
action; he told the residents that they, too, must play in the
game if they hoped to get some results.
58.
The MCA, by way of its multi-functional character,
possessed the resources officially loaned it by other city
agencies.
With respect to resident concerns, the most im-
portant of these were probably the BRA and ABCD connections,
since both agencies were directly concerned with working *ith
resident groups.
The BRA experience with "mandate groups" and
citizen interest made it aware of the potential resources and
delicacies of resident involvement.
It would be willing, but
probably cautious, to work with residents in Model Cities.
In
initial planning stages, the main BRA link was in the person of
Edward Teitcher, a specialist in housing and the man largely responsible for conducting the BRA's Community Renewal Program
study of the Roxbury GNRP.
ABCD's role in Boston's MC began by virtue of it's community-action orientation as Boston's official Poverty Agency.
Although the Green Amendment had put ABCD potentially under
the Mayor's thumb, White had announced that he would make no
decisive changes before 1969, so ABCD operated in 1967-68 much
as before, in working through and with citizen groups.
In
Model Cities, there were three levels of ABCD involvement.
In
addition to the staff level, 'there were research and information resources to be extended to MC participants, and there
were the Area Planning Action Councils (APACs) simultaneously
operating in the three poverty target areas that overlapped
with the MN.
isms.
These were the primary citizen involvement mechan-
59.
An APAC had the task of deciding what poverty programs its neighborhood needed, and then instituting and controlling them.
Program possibilities included everything
from Headstart and teen lounges to credit unions and cooperatives.
The main point was that APACs were always controlled
by a majority of elected low-income residents of the neighborhood.
APAC delegates also comprised half the central ABCD
board of directors.
Even so, however, funds going into the
APACs were limited, there were divisions over its use, and
there was often a neighborhood antipathy to the antipoverty
program and these it's local arms.
Although there was in the
APACs, a potential "to establish city-wide coalitions that could
bring their united effort to bear on some of the common issues",
so far there had been more independence and division than unity. 2
Model Cities protagonists faced probable contact with
the three APACs overlapping the MN, by virtue of the formal
ABCD connection and the MC mandate to coordinate with existing groups, but also by virtue of the fact that the APACs were
there and were conducting activities similar to MC concerns.
Since the APACs were neither all united nor totally independent,
"cooperating" with them was likely to be complicated and
For example, see article by Melvin H. King, Boston
Globe, op, cit., and the article by George Bennett, ABCD
Director, ibid., p. A-34.
2
King, ibid., p. A-35.
60.
delicate at best.
Thus, for the MCA, the various links with
ABCD were inevitable and of mixed potential, requiring complex maneuvering if any real advantages were to be hammered
out for the MN.
The other basic organizational structure in Boston's
MO was the Neighborhood Board, modeled according to the form~t set up by the April Community Conference.
Structurally,
the Board constituted a parallel power to the MCA; neighborhood agency and city agency were to be jointly responsible for
working out an official MC plan.
This represented a real coup
for the community in terms of administrative framework, and
Boston had drawn attention as the only Model City in the country
to have a major policy-making body composed solely of elected
neighborhood representatives.
In addition to the Board's own funds and structural
position, it was strengthened by its veto power over any final
plan.
If the Board and MCA could not agree on any item, it
would have to be. hammered out by negotiations among one Board
designatee, one MCA designatee, and a representative of the Mayor.
In philosophy and orientation, there were key informal
power commitments to building a meaningful role for the Board,
and through it, the neighborhood.
When the original proposal
was drafted, it was anticipated that the process of resident participation would be developed along with the development of the
MC programs themselves, and this philosophy has carried over into
61.
the initial planning stages. 3
Parks, backed up by Mayor
White's pledge to aid "the people" was one city administrator who could and did publicly inform the community that,
"I will do it with you, but I don't intend to do it for anybody."
4 He regularly included Board representatives in ma-.
Jor negotiations and often directed inquiries and offers of
resources to the Board rather than handling them in the MCA
office.
He also viewed the Boards veto power as a poten-
tially strong lever, and it was to his agency's advantage to
emerge productively with the Board rather than against it at
the end of the planning period.
The existence of structural and informal opportunities
for representative neighborhood participation did not, however,
insure their best use. How they would be capitalized on, would
depend greatly on othe Board's members and their dapabilities
in terms of time, attitudes, connections, personal influence and
power.
The Board's chairman, M. Daniel Richardson, was a politic&l;-figure of some influence, although younger and less wellestablished than Parks.
He had been active in the community
and served as Director of Community Organization for the Roxbury
Federation of Neighborhood Centers; his full-time job was as a
consultant for a leading Boston urban planning firm.
Another
Andrew M. Olins, BRA, interview on January 9, 1968
4
Paul Parks, in a speech at a public meeting held by
the Model Neighborhood Board for Area Three, Girls'; High School,
Roxbury, March 31, 1968.
62.
facet of Richardson's activity was his association with the
United Front, a highly-politicized black militant group that
arose in the aftermath of Martin Luther King's death.
His
additional activities, however, included an established liberal group, the American Friends Service Committee, as well as
the NAACP.
Like Parks, Richardson was in a highly visible
position, although the basis of his leadership function rested
not so much with the Mayor's backing as with the Neighborhood
It was Richardson who most often engaged
Board's confidence.
in major negotiations along with Parks; in fact Richardson's
position was a delicate pivotal one between the Board and the
Agency, and he continually turned to the Board for approval,
suggestions, and discussion.
The other seventeen Board members had a wide diversity
of experience and orientation.
Almost all had worked in com-
munity groups, and often in more than one at a time.
Most of
their leadership experience had been in specifically oriented
organizations; few, if any, had had exposure to the huge range
of concerns comprehended by Model Cities.
representatives, but in fact,
They were elected
seemed mainly "representative"
in the sense of comprising a random sample of people active in
community affairs
-
-
few were held directly responsible to
any specific, organized constituency, other than the general
geographic areas from which thpy were elected.
In fact, for
each sub-area, citizen representation bore a different kind of
relevance, and this was reflected in the characteristics of
63.
elected Board members, as noted earlier.
All, however,
shared a common structural position as "volunteers" in the
This meant that Board work had to be eased
MC bandwagon.
in alongside regular jobs, family, and other community affiliations;
The only monetary recompense was for small travel
or babysitting expenses.
The Neighborhood Board, although officially "parallel"
to the city's MCA, actually occupied a mediating role midway
between the neighborhood and the City.
This arose from the
nature of its explicit responsibilities of organizing and informing the community, 5
untary, membership.
as well as from its elected, but vol-
It was supposed to be able to reach up to
City Hall and at the same time reach out to the neighborhood,
where it theoretically would be exposed to community pressures
and thus serve as a medium for translating them into policy.
Organization from the Board down, for reaching out into the community, was not specified by the original Community
Conference proposal, but was left to the Board itself.
In
weekly meetings that began immediately after their August election, the Board members hammered out a framework for these communication and general policy-making functions.
They organized
three standing committees, each having several members, so one
Board member was likely to serve on two committees.
The Public Information Committee was to focus on communications with the neighborhood, and was initially organized
5 Ibid.
64.
along the six-sub-area lines.
This was intended as a way
of discovering the information problems and resources unique
to each of the six, which have wide social, economic, and
political variations.
The Program Planning Committee was
concerned with the loosely defined task 6f discovering and
developing program ideas.
Finally, the Federation of Organi-
zations group was to begin the "monumental task of bringing
all esisting organizations in the area together so that their
resources might be brought to bear" on MC planning.6
As sug-
gested at the April Conference, the object was to set up a confederation of all interested agencies, community groups, and
businesses, to "advise and inform" the Board.
In other words, then, the structural and informal provision for citizen participation were sometimes highly specified in advance, and at other times, left for development.
Structurally, the Board was specifically parallel to MCA, but
organization downward was not structured in advance and this
imposed great burdens on Board members.
Another structual difficulty was the "volunteer" nature
of the Board, which hampered Board members' capabilities to
operate under the tight time constraints.
Informally, there were once again assets as well as problems for successful citizen participation.
On the side of as-
sets, there was officials' willingness to include citizens, and
also the BRA and ABCD cognizance of resident group importance.
6 Neighborhood
Board, op. cit., p. 3.
65.
But, there were difficulties due to the different sub-area
needs, and the fact that different sorts of "representation
or involvement were relevant to each.
These different sorts
of representation needs would all have to be met under the
same overall MC framework, yet were not accounted for in the
structuring except insofar as different Board members were
elected for each sub-area.
4.
The Neighborhood Board as a Working Body
The well-intended organization and philosophy for citizen action had to be played out in the reality of a dynamic environment of people, events, and conditions.
Focusing on one
booly of participants, the Neighborhood Board, 1, shall look at
its capability to function in the real world, as it began work
during the first several months of the planning year.
The
Board's "success" would depend on several things, including the
structural and informal setup already described, but also the
Board's nature as a working body.
This involved the kinds of
functions the Board's "citizen representation" should have fulfilled, and it s actual capabilities to function.
Functioning
depends on the use and deployment of resources, which we can
characterize by way of the five operating themes mentioned
earlier.
We have mentioned the Board's character as a volunteer
body.
ure.
Perhaps a better descriptive term was its "amateur"statThis is not to ignore the fact that individual members
66.
could and did possess varying types and de7grees of expertise; rather, it connotes the circumstance that the Board 4
as a body was a sort of formalized residents' interest group,
possessing administrative and power-manipulatory abilities
only insofar as they might have been possessed by chance by
individual members.
The Board was designed for the purpose of
pursuing community interests, and for that reason, was bolstered
with powers to initiate, to veto, to have some financial independence, and the option to seek professional advice.
Nothing
in that design, however, could insure the Board's actual capacity to use the powers and to be able to administer and monitor
the huge variety of concerns comprehended in Model Cities.
Another major operating difficulty was the fact that
the kind of representation relevant to one sub-area was not
likely to be the most critical one to the next
-
-
yet all rep-
resentatives would have to work in some common mode for the
Board to operate as a body.
Granting that there are different
kinds of representation, it is nonetheless necessary to look
at the Board as a whole working body, since as a body, it possesses both structural and informal resources and existence.
Because it existed as a body, it could have functions as a body,
beyond the different representative functions of its members.
The working functions of the Board centered around it's
nature as a mediating body between the Neighborhood and the
City.
These functions fell into two categories: Tobilization,
requiring communication with the neighborhood, and policy
-
67.
program achievement.
In the Boston setup, these. could have
had a number of possibilities.
Communication could have con-
tributed to large-scale mobilization of community-interested
groups and individuals.
At the least, communication should
have run in both directions between Board and community.
could have had at least two levels: issue and action.
It
In
"issue communication", the Board would inform the community
of issues and facts, and the community would inform the Board
of preferences and desires.
In "action communication" there
would be a two-way transmission involving resources needed for
concrete action:
Board would inform community of tasks and re-
source needs, and community would respond in terms of men and
materials capable of performing the jobs.
The other kind of function, policy and program achievement, necessarily related to communication, but actually would
have taken place mainly within the Board.
Using community and
other preference inputs, facts, and potentials, the Board would
formulate its own substantive policy positions.
This would, in
turn, contribute an ability to initiate programs, as well as an
ability to make consistent response to program or policy ideas
initiated by any other group, such as the MCA, or even a group
from within the community.
In practice, this function could
have ranged from comment on MCA plans, to real initiation, design, and decision on programs.
These functions were the sort of action and decision
that the Board probably should have been taking.
Actually, the
68.
Board's job in terms of these "functions" existed only insofar as there was substance to be fed into the whole setup
of Board-with-powers-and-functions.
cation:
For instance, communi-
in the issue aspect there had to be issues of some
kind to gather facts and desires about; in the action aspect
there had to be definite tasks requiring the use of specific
kinds of resources.
1 r
-
-
For policy formation, the case was simi-
there had to be problems or potentials specific enough
that a policy position could be defined for them.
Otherwise,
the Board either had nothing to do, or had to make work for itself.
Immediately after its August election, the Board had its
first substance to work from, since it had to figure out how
to organize itself.
This was substantive in the sense that
there were definite choices to be made as to the best deployment of Board energies.
It involved discussion of real alter-
native ways to organize, from which emerged the formation of
the three standing committees.
The three-committee structure, was in effect. aimed at
the very tasks of communication and policy-formation, and for
that reason was a potentially valuable framework.
On the other
hand, all three committees had a very broad scope of concerns
that required complex administrative organization or orientation.
The task of the committee on Federation of Organizations potentially involved over 300 formal community organizations, as well
as any other interested groups.
Program Planning had to face
the myriad of social, economic, and physical possibilities of
69.
MC itself.
Public Information had the job of setting up a
two-way dialogue with over 62,000 people, many of them either
hostile or apathetic to government-sponsored "progress".
In
each case, the Board was capable of an intelligent "amateur"
job, but the scope of the tasks tooloften required an exacting professional administrator's skill.
Thus, for instance, the Confederation committee from the
start held a continuous round of small group meetihgs in all
areas, contacting people on a face-to-face basis -
- but in an
urban complex of 62,000 this was a slow way to "confederate".
A professional organizer or administrator might have been able
to use existing community organizations under Board auspices
in order to
accomplish the same task more efficiently.
Similarly, "program planning" in'Volved the gathering of
information and also the talent to know what information, and
how much, was useful.
It was easy to be di'verted by detail
and lose the main thread.
These difficulties
are all likely
to arise when people are confronted by a vaste range of unfamiliar subject-matter, but they are less likely to mislead
a professional who has run the course before.
In addition to these considerationg, the Board's policyformation function was irrelevant unless there was at least
some potential for making that policy effective or influential.
The Board was a potentially powerful and visible political body,
which could have asserted its "community representative" status
to push programs or policy that were vital to the community,
70.
but otherwide negligable to City policy-makers.
This, how-
ever, required a conscious perception of potential power,
and a willingness to play a political power game with its
possible risks and rewards.
In other words, the Board's capabilities to use resources to fulfill its functions suffered from the outset by
virtue of the Board's amateur character.
Even more basic
problems arose from the fact that the different sub-areas
needed different sorts of "representation."
Also, the Board
as a body had to fulfill still other representative functions
by virtue of its structural position as mediator between city
and neighborhood.
As a citizen representative body, then, the Board had
a number of operational functions.
How work was actually
done, and resources deployed, could be characterized in terms
of the five operational themes*.
As mentioned earlier, these
were: the division of labor, the use of professionals, -use of
community organizations, visibility and communications, and
perception and use of power.
After seeing how these themes
emerged, it will be possible to review and assess the Board's
abilities to perform its many functions.
The first theme involves a possible division of labor
among all the MC participants.
Where citizens-merely advise
or consent, labor division is not problematic, but Boston had
gone far beyond the Guidelines provision that citizen representatives merely be guaranteed "access to channels of decision
71.
Boston MC had in fact, vested a responsibility
making."
for channels and decisions in the Neighborhood Board.
In
doing so, it created two decision-making bodies (Board and
MCA) without, however, specifying what kinds of decisions
were to be made where.
By formal provision, either body can
veto the other; both must eventually agree on all policy.
Still, different kinds of policy could have been the particular concern of one group or the other.
Certain areas or
functions could have been allocated for initial policy formations, to be brought to joint conference later on.
This
would have been efficient, given the number and variety of MC
concerns.
No such division of labor was specified at the outset,
and during early planning stages neither the Board or the MCA
explicitly claimed full responsibility for one r'ealm of policy.
There were a number of possible reasons for this mutual hesitation to clearly divide labor "efficiently".
First, there
were benefits for both bodies in "joint" consideration of any
topic or issue: wishes of all parties could be considered well
before last-minute confrontation, information resources could
be shared, and political blame could be shared if there were
opposition from other quarters.
In terms of the politics of
compromise, which may well have been the kind of politics desired by both sides, these were all good reasons for sharing
labor.
Another point with respect to labor is that sometimes it
does not seem to be divisible.
This was particularly true of
72.
the kind of concerns in MC; adequate housing was eventually
a function of employment, was a function of training, was a
function of environment, was a function of housing.
This
kind of circularity, however, was just what made a division
of labor desirable.
If anything was to get done, its parts
would have to be separated enough to allow some concentration
and formulation of alternatives, then the whole might have
been knit together.
Still another consideration in dividing the labor in
Boston was probably the desire to develop process and product
simultaneously.
For this reason alone, political delicacy a-
side, the City professionals and officials might have hesitated
to impose a mode of labor on the Board.
If this was the case,
any initiative toward a division of labor would have had to
In fact, both groups made over-
come from the BQard itself.
tures in this direction, but stopped far short of a complete
task allocation, at least in early planning stages.
The Board made overtures toward a work division in one
functional area, housing.
It designated five specific housing
aspects with which it was particularly concerned and for which
it would take responsibility.
The CDA was amenable, and would
continue to share the relevant resources it could offer.
This
was the only area, however, in which the Board took such initiative, and all other MC concerns remained everyone's immediate
concern, all during the first months of planning.
73.
The CDA for its part introduced a "work program"
framework, which made a systematic break-down of MC concerns
into "milestones-tasks-costs-staff".
The result, covering
the tasks to be done in each program component, was a way of
putting the jobs down in black and white for all to see and
discuss.
It was not, however, any kind of division of tasks
between Board and MCA, for two reasons: the "staff" specifications always included both Board and MCA staff, and there was
no sequence of priorities which could have pointed up any urgency for either group to take immediate responsibility.
The sharing of almost all labor meant that nobody would
be explicitly excluded from different program aspects, but it
also meant that the Board would continue to labor under the unfamiliar burden of a very broad scope of concerns.
This brings
us to a second theme, the possibilities of professional staff
hired specifically tb aid the Board in its work.
The $35,000.
earmarked for the Board's use was at least partly intended to
finance some professional staff, but in early planning stages
the Board hesitated to begin cutting into this resource.
It
was also difficult to anticipate just what sort of professional would be needed, since technician, administrator, community
organizer, and more talents could conceivably have been useful.
Although they were willing to discuss probably staff needs,
and began soliciting applications, by April of 1968, no final
action had yet been taken.
Thus, from August till well into
April, the Board functioned without any professional staff of
its own.
74.
The lack of their own staff raised definite difficulties for Board members, especially in light of the number of
topics with which the Board was concerned.
Members were ob-
liged to fulfill their own staff functions, including the
gathering of information, answering and making inquiries,
reading all mail and literature
-
-
in short, the absence of
staff forced the Board to do all its own screening and organizing, since no professional was on hand to perform the mediating role we suggested earlier in this study.
The Board was
thus trying to perform several gargantuan tasks at once: communication with 62,000 people, policy formation in at least a
dozen areas, and all the related screening, organizing, and
data-gathering at the same time.
Although the Board could and
did accept voluntary staff aid, there was no one responsible
for orchestrating all these efforts.
In effect, every volun-
teer-staff offer that the Board accepted., added another constellation to the vast galaxy of people and interests it was
already trying to monitor.
In addition to the hiring of staff and the coordinating
of volunteers, there remained a third sort of human resource
available to the Board.
These were in the existing community
organizations, the subject of our third theme.
From the out-
set, it was anticipated that the numerous community groups would
be a means of spreading citizen involvement and also a valuable
asset in terms of human energies and experience.
The original
Community Conference had suggested that community groups be
75.
used in these ways.
As one Conference participant phrased
it,
...Our neighborhood has taken its own survey. We
know pretty well what the people in our area want.
I think most neighborhood associations and organizations in the community are that way.
The way I see it is for all our associations and
organizations to have some kind of representation
on a board that will have the power to control what
goes on in this program. 1
It was clear that the main working Board could not
have representatives of several dozen organizations, but the
Conference suggested that these be organized into a federation to advise and work with the Board.
The Board's response
in August of 1967 was to form the Federation Committee.
From the start, however, that committee was likely to
be plagued by problems of equity and representation.
An early
invitation to a powerful group might, in effect, close channels to other groups, and in a community of 62,000, choosing
a truly "representative" mandate group was clearly unrealistic.
Short of organizing another mass conference, the committee
could and did start by contacting individual groups.
The com-
mittee, wishing to contact existing organizations and also the
interested unaffiliated, felt it best to begin by holding small
meetings around all the MC areas.
This was probably one way
to avoid turning over the whole works to any one or few powerful organizations, but it was not the quickest way to
Riddell, op. cit., .quoting Ralph Smith, chairman of the
Lower Roxbury Community Council
76.
confederate a working body.
Individual Board members were
usually active in several organizations, and so might have
immediately tried to pull them in, but either these efforts
failed or were never made., Most likely it was the latter,
since there seemed to be a general philosophy that Board work
was separate, a duty to all residents in an area and not a
position to be used for singling out specific groups to the
exclusion of others.
Thus, the -one-by=-one approach was a
practical one in light of the Board's orientation; it was, however, impractical in light of the realities of short time and
huge scope of concerns.
A plan was made for organizing the gradually accumulating contacts into a functional working system.
The Feder-
ation committee worked out a system of eight sub-committees;
seven of these would each be concerned with a functional task
area, and the eighth would serve to coordinate the others. The
sub-committees were to be manned by members of interested community organizations, or interested individuals.
The problem,
however, was the time needed for such a system to get under way.
In April, a good seven months after its inception, the Federation group was still trying to contact any and all interested
community elements, in order to begin to form the sub-committees.
If MC program plans were to be due in September, not
much time remained for the task groups to be formed.
In the meantime, organized community groups could wonder
if they were ever to be included.
The strongest and most
7T.
energetic of these were likely to wonder the most.
As late
as March, the leader of an active umbrella organization was
reportedly waiting for the Board to respond to his offer of
valuable aid, and wondering why the Board appeared instead
to be turning to extra-community groups like universities.
The Board's gradualism thus was straying into critically
sensitive areas with influential community people, a particularly dangerous game to play in Roxbury's volatile situation.
The Board was either unaware of the dangerous consequences of its actions, or else knew of no other way to do
their job.
In the incremental way, the Board continued to
attempt to include community groups where possible.
From the
Board's perspective, there probably seemed to be little substance in which the groups could be involved.
Since the first
year was for "planning", the Board's functions could sometimes seem to be totally empty, there being no immediate issues
to be subjects of communication or policy specification.
One
example of an opportunity seized did come in March, when Board
members did invite interested groups to a meeting with representatives of the Boston Weilfare Department.
The purpose of
the meeting was a substantive one, to pass on some general
information about income maintenance programs.
Although this
was potentially a major MC consideration, this was the first
opportunity at which some of the groups that might be interested had been gathered for any kind of discussion.
The groups
represented included all three APACs, the New Urban League,
78.
even a housing project tenants' organization
-
-
people
that should indeed, have been talking together about the
possibilities of MC programs.
The fourth theme, visibility and communication is
similarly woven in with all these situations and events.
Visibility is a necessary condition to communication, and
both items were difficult for the Board during the early
planning period.
two senses.
The visibility condition was a problem in
First, the Board was often invisible at the
city level, despite its official status as parallel power to
the MCA.
Although its existence and importance were recog-
nized by the Mayor and MCA, other city agencies were not so
well aware of the Board and tended to make their MC contacts
through Parks.
An example of this, was the Welfare Depart-
ment, which became actively aware of the Board only when the
latter requested the Department's cooperation for the incomemaintenance information meeting.
Other city agencies may have
remained similarly unaware of the Board's significance if they
were never directly contacted and invited in.
A second kind of invisibility was that at the community
level.
Many community residents did not really know what
"Model Cities" was, or what its Neighborhood Board might do.
Even those who had some idea that MC existed were not always
aware of how or why they should contact Board members.
Condit-
ions varied from area to area, but almost nowhere was there
clear cut visibility, or regular communications going on.
79.
The Board hoped to work on these matters by holding
public information meetings in each area.
At an area meet-
ing at the end of March, visibility and communications were
clearly major problems, as demonstrated by several aspects
of the meeting.
First, the audience was not at all certain
of what Model Cities was; this was sensedhby Parks, who was
present and able to make an explanatory speech.
Second, there
had clearly been a lack of adequate public information about
the Board and its activities, and some community people who:
roseto ask questions seemed to perceive the Board members as
an almost alien "establishment".
Thus, one person complained
that the official Board headquarters was not even in the MC
area, and asked why the Board could not "hang out" where more
people could find it.
Board members explained -that their of-
fice had been donated and that they could be reached by phone,
but an unmistakable bristle of dissatisfaction remained with
the audience.
respond
-
-
Another resident asked how the community could
what could they do and who could they go to?
The visibility-communications problem had three dimensions.
One was the Board's limited capability to do its own
public relations work, which could have been alleviated with
professional aid.
The second difficult dimension was the
Board's apparent hesitancy to take on any controversial roles
that might automatically draw attention.
This seemed largely
a function of the personalities of Board members, and the fact
that the period observed was merely the beginning of planning.
80.
The third aspect was the old problem we have already
mentioned in respect to the Board's functions; if there were
no substantive issues, then there seemed to be no functions
to perform, and no subject-matter to communicate.
In reality,
the problem was notiso much a lack of issues as a lack of
focus on specific 'issues. The Board wished to communicate all
things to all people, but could not pay enough attention to
any one thing at a time to evolve a specific issue or policy
question.
Moreover, involving the community as decision-makers,
(rather than merely informing them) also required some substance to work from.
For example, in the South End urban re-
newal project, director Dick Green was famous for his "walk
through" method of planning with people.
Green never just
walked through and gathered ideas; he brought with him a proposed plan, which was continually discussed, rediscussed, and
modified.
We come now to a final theme which has been implicit
throughout our discussion.
power.
Namely, the perception and use of
By "power" -rd mean the resources, both personal and
material, which can be used to influence the actions of men or
the course of events.
For the Board, there were a number of
resources of this nature: the formal power provisions, the
critical. ghetto situation which could make public and officials
.sit up and take notice, the officials and professionals committed to aiding the Board, the neighborhood as a whole or elements in the neighborhood.
These resources are relevant
81.
insofar as they could be used, and their use first required
perception, either consciously or unconsciously.
For inl.
stance, neighborhood pressure was a potential source of great
power, but would have had to be rallied' to any cause.
The neighborhood resource would have had to be tapped
by or for the Board, but the other three resources were closer
at hand.
the Board.
Their use could have arisen directly from within
That is, in their interactions with officials and
in their own policy action, the Board could have applied pressure by virtue of its formal powers to initiate and so on, and
by virtue of the attention which officials would have had to
render.
Using these powers was inevitable if the Board was to
take any action, but there were different degrees of pressure
with which they could be applied.
These degrees depended on
the kind of political "game" the Board was willing to play,
and could play,in the given circumstances.
Conceivably, for
instance, they might have tried "militant pressure politics",
pressing hard for specific demands and using their veto and
neighborhood pressure threats as means to control of all MC
matters.
At the other extreme, they might have played "co-
operative consent politics", using power resources only as a
means of making their views heard and their consent solicited.
In fact, during the phase observed, the Board followed
a middle road, which
vation."
I
could call the "politics of conser-
82.
This seemed to involve an implicit recognition that eventually it would be important to take strong stands, but that
in the meantime, power should be conserved by taking nonbelligerent, cooperative attitudes.
This was
own ob-
servation; it was never an explicit Board strategy, but
rather seemed to characterize the Board's use of power.
For instance, immediately after their August election,
the Board did not choose to assert specific preferences or
positions, but instead, went to work on the organization and
information tasks that confronted them.
When Parks was ap-
pointed to head the MCA, the Board was not consulted and some
members might have recommended other men had they been asked-still, the Board did not choose to raise questions or even to
issue any statement of support or doubt that might have been
picked up by the press as well as the Mayor's office.
During the next few months, the Board did begin to
take stands on emerging issues.
areas of housing policy.
It indicated some priority
And a stronger stand was taken on
the matter of a neighborhood survey.
This had been proposed
through the MCA by BRA and ABCD staff, as a means for meeting
some Federal requirements and developing programs.
The Board
saw the survey as an opportunity for training and using neighborhood workers and for public. relations purposes.
Perhaps
most important, was the symbolic significance of a detailed
community probe, which could either be done by "outsiders" or
by direct neighborhood sponsorship.
Thus, although the MCA
83.
staff was anxious to proceed and could have efficiently
done so by itself, the Board impressed its demands and was
given a piece of the action.
The Board would do inter-
viewing and hiring of survey personnel, with the aid of
the MCA professionals' recommendations.
And, the Board
would participate in deciding the exact nature of the survey.
It was questionable whether these controls would have
been granted the Board without their expressed interest.
Clearly, the survey might have been designed and begun more
quickly without the Board maneuvers.
In fact, during the first planning months, the only
opportunities for a strong power assertion might have often
seemed too minor for the Board to make a stand.
The prevail-
ing mood seemed to be that only a limited number of real power plays could be carried off by the Board during the planning
year, and that accordingly, the times for making the attempts
should be chosen wisely.
Behind this mood, there was probably
a reasoning that official ears could only be bent so far and
that the Board dared not press its luck by seeming unreasonable and overdemanding.
Another reason could have been a
feeling that cooperation or compromise might be equally, or
more, productive than hostility or competition.
And, co-
operation was not so likely to produce bad feelings, and official or extra-community power reactions.
On the other hand, by playing "power conservation" the
Board may have been heading toward half a pie when it could
84.
have gotten three-fourths.
There was also the more dan-
gerous possibility that if and when the "major issue" arose and the Board wanted.to take a stand, it could have
found its conserved power depleted by virtue of disuse
-
-
power that has not been demonstrated is not always credible.
5. Summary: The Functions of Citizen Participation
and the Chances for Success
Citizen participation in Boston had a history of renewal experience that had indicated its various functional
possibilities and some modes for operation.
When Model
Cities came along, the political setting was one in which
neighborhood residents were able to seize the initiative and
demand a major role for a Neighborhood Board.
Although dif-
ferent sub-areas had very different citizen participation
needs, all were given similar treatment by inclusion on the
Board, where the explicit and emphasized citizen involvement
function was policy-and-program achievement.
In the process, the sub-area needs for access, mobilization, and political learning and power-building had to be
met as side issues to the central concern of policy-program
achievement.
By April of 1968 some of the difficulties in the
sub-areas faced potential relief.
Access and power-building,
were possibly to be pursued in Area 1 by the Jamaica Plain
APAC, and in Area 2 with the aid of Urban Field Service. The
sub-areas needing mobilization and political-learning work
could still be aided by the hiring of professional staff for
85.
for the Board, particularly a public relations expert to
begin communications with 62,000 people.
All the sub-
areas could be aided by the addition of professional administrators; access, mobilization, and program achievement,
would be enhanced by someone with the explicit job of directing the right human and material resources to the right
policy-and program-makers.
In April, the Board was be-
ginning to make serious moves toward the staffing action that
it probably should have taken much earlier.
The discussion of sub-area needs was only a brief one,
and most attention in this study was placed on the Board as
a whole, which was trying to perform a policy-and programachievement function.
Nonetheless, that function could not
bear much chance of success unless the sub-area's needs for
access, mobilization, and power-learning /building were supplied simultaneously.
The chances of "success" in these-
functions seemed dubious in the first part of the planning
year, since the potential relief measures mentioned above would
solve only some of the problems, and this only if the relief
measures were actually taken. The greatest problem areas were
in communications and visibility, mobilization of residents'
interest and the organization and use of those interests.
In fact, my definitions of "success" for the various
citizen-participation functions were focused on a successful
end-state.
Along the way, it is possible of course, to have
degrees of progress or potential success.
So, the various
86.
citizen participation functions for the sub-areas might yet
make progress.
This will depend greatly on the Board members'
capabilities to continue and expand communications, especially
with the community individuals and groups who now possess
rising prestige and power.
That power consists especially of
the young black professionals who are now involved in various
'ntrepreneurial ventures, and possess skill, political influence
and some financial resources.
Their groups are the young com-
munity development and housing corporations, business and investment contacts, and so on.
"save"
Model Cities - -
It is this power which could
bringing these groups and individuals
in would automatically aid sub-area needs for interest mobilization, access and power-building.
This element, coupled with
a Neighborhood Board staff adept at public relations and communications, could greatly increase the chances for successful citizen involvement in Model Cities.
Turning back now to the Board as a whole, what were
its chances of potential success in the function of policyand program-achievement?
In a sense, the whole could be de-
fined as the sum of its parts, and I could say that overall
Board success can exist only insofar as the various sub-area
citizen-involvement needs are met. This is one side of the
picture; the other side is a look at the Board as a body with
its own "achievement" function".
In addition to the problems
of communication and inclusion of powerful community elements
the policy/program achievement function was foundering on the
87.
problem of specific focal issues
and tasks.
The lack of focus on specific issues could be still
corrected as soon as those issues came before the Board for
definite policy and program decisions.
The critical di-
mension was whether those issues would crystallize soon
enough, before community groups lost heart and lost interest,
and before the Board forgot its structural and informal power
resources and they fell in disuse.
Issues did exist, and the
beginning of a remedy would be to crystallize and push the
issues into specific decisions and tasks to be
to be executed
particularly the Board, as the primary
by specific people
-
resident vehicle.
One way of accelerating a focus on issues
-
would be to begin discussions from staff - prepared memos
oriented toward
specific policy or program formulations.
A-
nother step would be to make a very specific division of labor,
placing definite responsibility for certain kinds of decisions
in certain places.
tween Board and MCA.
This could include a division of labor beIt could also include task delineations
within the Board, and these lines of responsibility could be
extended from the Board to other community participants.
The
point is to place specific responsibilities in definite places,
so that actions and decisions can be taken and the appropriate
parties held responsible.
All this assumes that the parties involved are willing to
take responsibility for decisiveness
-
-
this is a critical as-
sumption, and is probably true of the different participants
88.
to varying degrees.
The Board's cautiousness in seizing
power initiatives could be an indication that it is not willing to take responsibility for decisiveness.
"Neighborhood Board" is
an empty designation
If so, then the
-
-
it
would be
incapable of fulfilling any of the purposes for having citizen
participation in the first place.
Since the Board members are
obviously devoting time and effort, it is reasonable to assume
that they could be encouraged and made very much aware of their
responsibility for decisiveness.
This could be done in at
least two ways: from within, by the encouragement of a staff
professional; and from the community, by the pressure of involved community groups pushing for action wherever they are
interested.
If success can be pursued along these lines, the various
functions of citizen involvement may yet be performed under
Boston's Model Cities framework.
That framework, however, poses
severe constraints in terms of short time and vast program concerns.
In the next chapter I shall discuss another attempt
to use the Model Cities as a framework for real commitment to
citizen involvement.
89.
CHAPTER V.
A Different Perspective-The Cambridge Program
The Boston Model Cities process seemed to be in
danger of by-passing some citizen participation functions of
first necessity, particularly amid the pressures of constrained time, and program complexity and scope.
The possible
participation functions were given different relative emphases in Cambridge, where the Model Neighborhood comprised
less than half the area of Boston's and had less than onefourth the resident population.
In Cambridge, as in Boston,
there was probably more emphasis on citizen participation than
in any of the other Model Cities in
the nation.
ever,
Cambridge's particular
the direct comparison ended.
Here,
how-
context, and the Model Cities process built and emerging from
it, must be reviewed in terms of its own unique needs and potentials.
Only after doing this will I return to look at both
cities to see if there are any common lessons or legitimate
comparisons to-be drawn.
Accordingly, I shall briefly describe the picture that
emerged in Cambridge over the first months of the planning
year.
My purpose in describing the Cambridge program was to
broaden the perspective for looking at Boston and at Model
Cities in general.
Once again, the proposed analytical frame-
work will be used, looking at citizen participation functions,
structual and informal setting, and working operations.
90.
1.
The Relevant Functions of Citizen Participation in
Cambridge Model Neighborhood
The relevant functions of citizen participation in
the Cambridge MC framework arose from the existing conditions and also from a history of past experience with community action.
A brief description of the MC area will lead
into discussion of the kinds of resident representation that
seemed to be the most important.
Cambridge's Model Neighborhood was composed of two adjacent areas officially designated Neighborhoods Three (N3)
and Four (N4).
Both were in East Cambridge, located close to
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; they were crisscrossed by several major cross-town arteries, and either one
of the proposed routes for the massive "inner-belt" expressway could cut a 300-foot wide swath through the Model Neighborhood.
Two types of industry were scattered in and around the
area.
On one hand, there were prestigious new research-orien-
ted complexes, represented by Technology Square and a new
N.A.S.A. Electronics Research Center.
On the other hand, were
some older, nineteenth-century type industrial activities.
Both kinds of industry had their influence on any residential
neighborhood space and character.
The older industries had
their nuisance activity and the newer "clean" industries had
a well-financed eagerness for space.
The search for space was
shared in by M. I. T. and by a large student population as well.
91.
In this setting lived the 3,567 families who constituted the "residential population" toward which MC was
They were mainly low- and mcderate-income people,
oriented.
and the housing stock in which they lived was aged and running down.
For several years they had watched more and more
of the low-and moderate-rent housing undergoing transition
to student housing, and more and more neighborhood space
being threatened by the industrial and educational and highway developers.
The area also had the typical range of "slum" social
problems; its rates for unemployment, welfare recipients, crime
and juvenile delinquency arrests, were all higher than city
The Model Neighborhood was a home for people who
averages.
were often poor and ill-housed.
ghetto.
It was not, however, a racial
Rather, it was a combination of ethnic groupings and
native stock, all sharing the problems of "little people" being pressed for space by the giants around them.
Negroes con-
stituted just slightly over five percent of the population, and
there were larger minority groups of Italians, Irish and Canadians, and a scattering of Polish, Scandinavians, Germans,
and others.
In all, foreign born or first-generation foreign
, 92.
stock made up 48% of the Model Neighborhood population.1
These ethnic groups played a large part in determining
the structure of social relationships in the area.
In fact,
in terms of social relations there were several well-defined
"neighborhoods" contained within N3 and N4.
In N3, there
was a distinct difference between Roosevelt Towers (the housing project), and Wellington-Harrington (WH), the latter being
largely white and containing the various ethnic enclaves.
When N3 was designated an urban renewal area, the Towers were
excluded, leaving only the WH section.
This put further strain
on the psychological barriers between the neighborhoods.
On
the other hand, N4's population was racially integrated, and
often were of lower income than the people in WH.
In N4, there
were two housing projects, as well as the "neighborhood" composed by St. Mary's Catholic Parish.
The break-down in terms of foreign stock as a percentage of the total Model Neighborhood population is:
8%
Italian
6
Irish
Canadian
5
Polish
3
United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Sweden--each 1% or
less.
Other foreign stock -
Total foreign stock, 48%
13%.
(18% foreign-born, 30% firstgeneration)
To give an idea of absolute numbers, Total Neighborhood Population is 15,000. Of these, Negroes number 840, or 5.5%.
All figures obtained with the aid of Nancy Howe, Planning Board,
City of Cambridge. Figures were derived from 1960 e**senge C" sos
data; however, since that time ethnic groupings have remained, and
have been increased by the addition of a growing Puerto Rican
group.
93.
.
These conditions in the Cambridge Model Neighborhood.
called for a certain combination of functions for
participation and representation.
citizen
The pressures for space
and competition by outsiders meant that resident representation should be oriented toward program 'achievement--designing and implementing policies and programs for neighborhood preservation, which was the most critical area need.
On the other hand, however, the diversity of social
types, and relations precluded the formation/any natural united front which could be "represented" for program achievement purposes.
Thus, another kind of representation was a
necessary first step: representation that would serve the
functions of mobilization, and political effectiveness.
The
diverse neighborhood groups would have to be mobilized to
fight together, and their united efforts would have to be politically effective.
In fact, the past experience with community action in
Cambridge Model Neighborhood was of the sort that could lead
to citizen involvement for the purposes of mobilization and
political effectiveness.
A description of this experience be-
gins with a few especially vigorous organizations.
These groups
were most often organized by outside sponsors, but had since
been dominated by neighborhood residents.
The 1960's had seen a real evolution in citizen participation in N3 and in N4.
Action during the early part of the
decade had generally occured either under the aegis of neighborhood settlement houses, or small neighborhood residents' groups.
94.
The settlement houses/approach to citizen involvement was
characteristically gradualist, which emphasized "the fact
that reaching and involving the people is a long, slow
process." 2 In the small resident-organized groups, involvement was more direct, but still limited,
-These associations
were usually concerned with limited, concrete objectives
such as new traffic lights or street repairs, but gradually
they were evolving in orientation from one-street to larger
neighborhood concerns.3
This slow evolution of citizen participation was accelerated by a few significant events: urban renewal, the War
on Poverty, and the inner-belt controversy.
Urban renewal
came colorfully onto the scene in N3 in 1963, when the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority (CRA) presented its Donnelly
Field Project for citizen approval at a mass meeting.
The
citizens, already feeling the pressures for space, and aware
of Boston's growing renewal difficulties, denounced the plan for
at least two reasons.
They were against "renewal", and, as
they had not been consulted, there were several unacceptable components in the plan.
City Council ordered the CRA to re-
appraise its own approach, and real citizen participation in
2
David Atwood Wentworth, "Deciding the Fate of the Poor-Power and Control in the Building of Democracy in a Changing
Low Income Neighborhood," Department of Political Science, Master's
Thesis (September, 1965), p. 77.
3lbid.,
p. 83.
95.
urban renewal was born in Cambridge.
The City hired a com-
munity organizer to help shape an autonomous citizens committee capable of responding to all neighborhood improvement plans.
The committee, including citizens both pro- and conrenewal, evolved into the Wellington-Harrington Citizens
Committee (WHCC).
It launched a neighborhood clean-up cam-
paign, established the basis for neighborhood-wide leadership,
and eventually decided renewal was necessary.
In cooperation
with CRA and the City Planning Office, WHCC produced a new
renewal plan, presenting it first to residents and finally,
to the City Council.
Thus, by May of 1965, urban renewal had
spurred a new scale and mode of citizen activity, concerned
with a whole neighborhood and working with city professionals.
WHCC did not have control, or even always a strong voice, but
it was nonetheless now an institutionalized residents' advisory
board.
Meanwhile, a second impetus to resident action came to
N4, with the War on Poverty in 1964.
In Cambridge, as else-
where, local agencies were vying to become the official "community action agency" for receiving and disbursing the new funds.
4.
An interesting account of these events is given by
Nathan Lowenthal, ed., "Citizen Participation in Urban Renewal,"
Columbia Law Review, 1966, pp. 484-605.
96.
The most likely Cambridge candidate was Cambridge Community Services, (CCS), an umbrella organization for about fifty private social agencies.
5
Other groups objected
that CCS lacked support of others, and that a new and different agency-image was needed.
Accordingly-, OEO created
for Cambridge a new, semi-public autonomous agency, the
Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee (CEOC).
CEOC was based on the proposition that people must
play a part in designing and executing programs, and for this,
purpose, it established neighborhood planning boards.
One-
third of each board would be representatives of public agencies, one-third of private agencies, and the remaining third
was to be a Planning Team of residents elected from the
neighborhood.
Along with this.. new citizen involvement frame-
work, CEOC introduced a new orientation to social change.
In-
stead of the settlement-house gradualism and change-of-attitude
tactics, CEOC would be aimed more at stimulating structural and
institutional changes, in private and public agencies as well
as in the response capability of the residents themselves.
N4- was one of the first neighborhoods to get CEOC action, and the residents on the Planning Team began to get experience with neighborhood programming and structured Federal
projects.
Gradually, over a three year period, the role of
the residents' Team grew into one of deliberate control of
5Wentworth, op. cit., gives a good account of the
action in Cambridge, esp. pp. 68-85.
97.
the N4 neighborhood board. 6
This came about as the resi-
dents became familiar with the politics of administration
and of their own neighborhoods; they were gradually able
to gain support and votes from key members of the rest of
the board.
There was also action in a non-governmental context,
for instance, in N4's confederation, the Committee of Organizations, Blocks, and Individuals (COBI).
COBI got its start
in 1966 for the purpose of combining individual and group
efforts in order to produce its own physical plan for the
neighborhood.
Professional aid was provided by the Cambridge
Corporation, a development corporation interested in bringing
Cambridge's rich institutional resources to the service of
residents.
COBI, with the Corporation's aid, made concrete
progress in small projects.
Even more important, it began to
develop into an organized, unifying action structure potentially capable of involving residents on a broader scale than
before.
Its very name emphasized its broad and varied base of
support; its key leaders were Planning Team members, but in
COBI they had the makings of grass-roots power.
6
James Donavan, CEOC Staff Director, interview on February 28, 1968. An anecdote illustrates the degree to which control had been taken by early 1968: The neighborhood had been
given a $50 million Federal grant for a new health center. In
discussions, a City Hospital representative noted that "citizen
participation" was being anticipated. The N4 Planning Team captain quickly and vigorously pointed out that in Cambridge, "We
don't 'participate'
-
-
we control!"
98.
Still a third impetus to resident action was sparked
by the "inner-belt" controversy.
The inner belt was an as-
yet uncompleted part of greater Boston's highway system,
designed decades earlier to create a belt for traffic flow
around the city.
One of the still-unconstructed parts was
to go through Cambridge, cutting a wide swath through several
areas including N4.
An ad hoc-group of citizens, many of
them N4 people, united in a Save Our City (SOC) group to oppose the inner-belt location.
In a battle lasting several
years, and still going on at this writing, the belt was successfully delayed
-
-
due in large part to the pressure and pub-
licity exerted by SOC.
Thus, even before Model Cities had rolled around,
there had begun significant patterns of mobilizationtand powerbuilding via citizen action in N3 and N4.
and also a CEOC Planning Team
N3 had the WHCC
comprised of Roosevelt Towers
people; in N4 there was the strong N4 Planning Team, and COBI.
All around, there was SOC.
There were, as well, the outside
resources related to them: Harvard University and M. I. T. had
begun to notice "the people", and Cambridge Corporation was
providing valuable encouragement to grass-roots involvement.
And, there was a new man at the Mayor's side in City Hall.
Justin Gray had been hired to .fill a new position as City Manager for Community Development.
Gray's job was "to develop im-
inative ways" for using the conglomeration of public-and private
99.
sector resources that might be applied to meet community
Gray was not only a man with innumerable con-
problems.
tacts and technical expertise, but somepne willing to work
with, and listen to, the people.
2.
The Structural and Informal Powers for
Citizen Involvement
The politicians in Cambridge City Hall were not particularly prepared for the kind of innovative action possible
through Model Cities, but the setting was ripe for strong resident initiatives.
In the city government, a council-manager-
weak mayor system, there was dissension and infighting, City
Council with regular splits and divisions.
Later during the
MC planning year, divisions and difficulties were to focus
especially on the selection of a new city manager, but this
would merely be a continuation of the infighting that had gone
on for a long while.
1
City of Cambridge, Highlights - - Application for
Model Cities Planning Grant, May 1, 1967, p. 6. (A 1968 revision describes program changes and structure to supersede
the 1967 version, but the latter gives population figures and
data as submitted originally.)
For example, at the City Council meeting on March 11,
1968, Counselor Daniel J. Hayes charged the "majority of five"
with "fiscal insanity" in their dismissal of the former City
Manager. Counselor Thomas H. D. Mahoney read a statement noting
the number of applications received for the post, and noted that,
"This is a most convincing answer to the prophets of gloom..who
predicted that we would not attract properly qualified applicants
because of the political climate of Cambridge, a climate they did
their best to create...." (As related in the Cambridge Chronicle
March 14, 1968, 1:6.)
100.
Still another potential for an active residents' opportunity
was the Model Cities program itself, and the financial funding incentives it offered to any City government.
On the city professional side, Gray and his staff
were interested in Model Cities, but at first preferred to
wait for the second round of applications, expecting to be
better prepared to bring MC to Cambridge later on.
When it
became apparent that there might be no "second round", Gray
snapped into action to prepare the lengthy required proposal,
in time for the May deadline.
With his experience and Washing-
ton connections, Gray had a good idea of what would make a
winning proposal.
This he could and did construct by assembling
a huge volume of professionally-prepared position and policy
papers on aspects suggested by the Guidelines.. This was "playing the game" on paper, but Gray and his staff had a slightly
different orientation in practice.
Their informal position
was that substantive planning and policy-making could come
only after citizen determination 6f its wishes and its role
in the process.
Accordingly, the paper proposal was prepared
efficiently but hastily, with an as yet unofficial staff commitment to bring citizens into the process where real policy
was concerned.
By April 24, the official proposal had been prepared
and awaited Council approval.
In the meantime, however, citi-
zen involvement had already begun informally.
Early in April.
there had been a state conference for MC information purposes,
101.
and along with Cambridge officials and professionals went
representatives from the WHCC, COBI, and the CEOC Planning
Teams.
The activists in these resident groups were also
keeping track of Model City events in Boston, and when the
Boston Community Conference made its demands, the Cambridge
residents were inspired to press their own. 2
Accordingly,
on April.24, when the Council convened to discuss the proposal, residents were there, too, en masse. Since residents'
approval had to accompany the official proposal, Council
postponed its own decision while the residents met.
The
Council's incentive to listen to the residents could have
been largely based on Model Cities' potential for eliciting
prestige and Federal funds.
It was reasonable to play the
Federal game, even to the extent of showing some deference to
these activist residents.
Off by themselves behind closed doors, the residents
hammered out their own position while Council waited.
Fi-
nally voting support of the proposal, they stipulated three
conditions for citizen control, to become part of the formal
model cities structure:
(1) the CDA, responsible for all MC planning and execution,
would have a resident majority, to be chosen by popular vote;
(2) all MC plans would be "for the benefit of the present
residents" of the area;
2
- Janet Rose, interview on March 19, 1968. Mrs. Rose
was president of COBI and chairman of the N4 Planning Team
as well. Later, she headed the volunteer Drafting Committee.
102.
any final MC proposal would be subject to veto by
(3)
referendum vote of all residents in the MC area.
City Council concurred, and Cambridge was on its way.
The setting for resident action thus had arisen from
Council's recognition of Federal funding opportunities, but
also from some strUctural and informal commitments to resident involvement.
One was the orientation of Gray and his
staff, and the other was the responsibility demanded by the
residents themselves.
On Gray's side, commitment to citizen
participation included a conviction that meaningful participation could come about only where there was also real development of residents' political capabilities, their dexterity in
making decisions and carrying out policy as part of an institutionalized political structure.
Thus, residents had to
be prepared for any responsibilities they were to assume, and
during the ensuing months,, Gray devoted his energies to this
proposition.
The planning year was to begin on December 21, 1967, and
Gray had secured Federal approval to devote the entire first
three months of it to the development of a process of meaningful citizen involvement, developing the functions of mobilization and political learning and power-building.
Every day
spent concentrating on "process" would mean one less day for
planning any "product" achievements, but the feeling was that
three months at least, must be spared to make certain the process was as citizen-controlled as possible, given the constraints on time.
If, at the end of the planning year,
103.
Cambridge
emerged with even one program, and a really work-
able process, it would be enough.
The Federal administrators had shown great interest,
and a willingness to go along, and plans were laid for a
three-month process development phase.
In those first three
months, the residents themselves would constitute a Drafting Committee to organize the CDA as the basic citizen action
group.
The Committee would spend three months hammering out
the details of CDA membership, scope, and responsibilities,
learning as they went along the political ins and outs of
being public agents.
All this, however, could not begin before the planning
year, and in the meantime, Gray worked to find-the best means
of forming the Drafting Committee itself.
By December, there
had been discussions with relevant area professionals, including those from the Cambridge Corporation, social service
agencies, CEOC, and CRA.
In a series of meetings, Gray ex-
plained the emerging plans for, and reasoning behind, the
formation of the Drafting Committee.
Basically, the plan was
to hold a mass public meeting in January, and there to solicit
volunteers to make up the Committee.
From some, there was opposition to this procedure.
Since the- Drafting Committee was to specify the exact composition and responsibility of the powerful CDA, the Committee's
membership could determine the nature of citizen involvement
1o4.
for the entire planning period.
There were some feelings
that the established neighborhood leaders should be chosen,
instead of having a "volunteer" mechanism that could include
any resident; this was probably related to a fear that during these months .of waiting the activist neighborhood
leaders were growing impatient and suspicious of City Hall.
Other advisors objected that a mass meeting vitiated real
"discussion,"
and feared that only the usual leaders would
volunteer, since there was no "issue" to bring out newly interested people.
Gray, pressed for time, but nonetheless determined to
avoid co-opting or chbosing only "established leaders",
successfully held out for the volunteer mechanism.
If estab-
lished leaders were impatient, they could volunteer; if anyone else were remotely interested, he could volunteer also
--
there was no time to be spent beforehand trying out issues
to see if a new leadership pattern might emerge.
The basic
issue was that Model Cities was here, and something had to be
organized quickly; hopefully it was being organized in a way
that gave citizen involvement some chance of success.
The Drafting Committee was formed in January, including
all who had volunteered at open neighborhood meetings held
for that purpose.
The number-of volunteers came to forty-six,
and they were a widely varied group of people, although most
were low-income.
They included several nuns from neighborhood
churches or convents, housewives, workers, old, young, those
experienced in community groups and those not so experienced.
105.
As chairman they elected Mrs. Janet Rose, a community activist and one of the "established leaders" whose interest
in MC had been anticipated.
Mrs. Rose was president of
COBI, an N4 Planning Team member, and had been one of the
most active residents in the MC proposal stage the preceding
April.
Familiar with the ways of power, the need for com-
munity control, and the problems of working with people, even
Janet Rose would have a difficult job in leading so many volunteers to decide so much in the short time allotted them.
These matters, then, formed the structural and informal context for Cambridge Model Cities' citizen participation.
The Model Cities' opportunity, the city political situ-
ation, and professional and resident attitudes had all entered
in.
The formal power provisions would be carried out or not,
according to the volunteers' capabilities to deplpy the resources potentially available to them.
3. The Drafting Committee as a Working Body
The reasons for having a Drafting Committee were twofold.
First, it was to develop a process of effective citizen
involvement, and second, it was to develop an organizational
product, the CDA.
In terms of the possible functions of citi-
zen representation, these reflected the needs of a Model
Neighborhood.
The development of process was, in fact, basic
to kinds of representation oriented toward mobilization and
community power-building, which were primary needs in Cambridge
106.
MC.
The development of the CDA would constitute the
representative function of eventual "program-achievement",
which would be Cambridge's very next need.
Both the working accomplishments of process and
product would be necessary prerequisites to activity during
the remainder of the planning year, and their development
in this earliest planning stage would be critical to the
whole program.
The citizens would be playing an "in-group"
power game in which their control could be both initiation
arni design, but whatever they did,idesign would become the
only operating basis for Model Cities.
The existence of the
whole program would depend on their accomplishments.
This situation necessitated a delicate balance for any
professional guidance of the process; thus the
operating
theme' of the professionals' role was crucial.
The participa-
ting professionals could not allow themselves to guide
so much
as to pre-empt resident responsibility and learning, but they
would have to provide enough.orientation for the residents
to come up with a definite CDA organizational structure at
the end.
The ground-rules for the professional role were sum-
marized in Cambridge's official proposal:
...I.t is fundamental.. .that model neighborhood area
representatives should be deeply involved from the
very onset of the planning process. Since these
representatives will have a major voice in establishing the administrative and policy characteristics of the Model Cities Agency, it is inappropriate to attempt to solidify these in advance--which
would, in effect, be contrary to the goal of
107.
substantial citizen participation and control.
Accordingly, Gray's staff did sketch some guidelines for the Committee to follow only if it so desired,
based on the administrative machinery suggested in the
official proposal,
2
This envisioned a CDA Board composed
of assorted representatives, a majority of them elected
from the neighborhood.
The Board would be the principle
policy-making body, while responsibility for fiscal and administrative detail would rest with the City Manager's office.
The Board's powers and duties would probably include basic
policy-making and setting of priorities, coordination of
other participating groups, and maintaining communication
with residents and private agencies.
The CDA could also over-
see the use of planning funds, and develop criteria for any
A professional
eventual neighborhood referenda on the plan.
city staff, such as Gray's, could be responsible for actual
planning of programs, according to policy as set by the Board.
These guidelines would give the Drafting Committee something to work from, but left much of the substance open to debate.
In other words, it provided substantive focus while
still giving the residents a meaningful role.
The Committee
would still have to write its own draft ordinance to create
the CDA, designating its size, composition, method of election,
Cambridge, Highlights..., op.. cit.,
2 Ibid., pp.
43-4.
p. 45.
108.
powers and responsibilities.
The draft ordinance would
then be voted on in a neighborhood referendum, and if
approved, then placed before City Council for action.
At
that time, with much of the planning year having gone by,
and citizens interested and informed, Council would have
to take action or else risk seeing Cambridge Model Cities
dissolve for lack of organization and citizen approval.
Any components vetoed by the Council would be re-negotiated
with the Committee.
Thus, the process began, and continued in a series of
meetings held several times per week for three months.
For
its own purposes, the Committee decided to learn to use parliamentary procedure, and also adopted ground rules requiring
a two-thirds majority of those present to approve any item.
This meant some long sessions to hammer out acceptable proposals.
And since most meetings, were in fact, attended by
thirty or so of the members, 3 approved decisions regularly reflected at least half the votes of the entire body.
During this period, the five "operating themes" of resource use and deployment could be traced in the Cambridge experience.
I have just mentioned one theme, in discussing the
role of the professionals in Cambridge.
The necessity to
orient resident participants, without imposing, was apparently
recognized in practice by the various professionals involved.
3
Rose, op. cit.
109.
These included staff made available to the Committee by
Gray and his office, by the CEOC legal assistance office,
and by the Cambridge Corporation. At the end of three months,
most of the Committee members felt the staff had played a
useful role, making themselves available for reference, but
never pushing their own points of view.
4
Another operating theme was the matter of dividing
labor and responsibilities.
This can be related to the sub-
stantive focus placed on CDA organizational matters.
This
was the Drafting Committee's explicit task, and one that
could be handled by the Committee as a group, especially since
guidelines had been provided.
Thus, this "labor" itself was
not a major difficulty in need of further divisionor delineation during the drafting period.
The theme of "use of community organizations" was notable
in Cambridge for its absence during the drafting phase. Since
participants had all volunteered as individuals, their membership in any other groups was not a direct concern.
In fact,
the intention here was to have citizens as representative of
"citizens", and that intention was maintained in the Committe's
independence of other community groups.
Still another operating theme was the use and perception
of power.
4
This could be related to all of the possible.
'
Ibid.; Mrs. Rose observed that the professionals were
also going through a learning process, and that "the most
significant ones were those willing to listen, and learn from
the people."
110.
functions of citizen involvement, but is particularly
relevant to the function of political learning and powerbuilding.
This function had already been under way in
Cambridge citizen experiences, and it evolved even further
for those on the Drafting Committee.
It can be described
in terms of the two separable elements of power-learning and
power-building.
The Drafting Committee experience in power-learning
was demonstrable in at least four ways. 5 First, organizational mechanics, such as parliamentary procedure turned out to
be useful and acceptable, even though many of the volunteers
had not had such experience before.
Other groups, such as the
Planning Teams, adopted parliamentary procedure for their own
purposes after seeing its value in the Committee's operation.
Second, participants became engaged in thinking out
the implications and consequences of policy items, and tracing
them back to their basic purposes.
For example, there was a
realization that in establishing resident voting procedure,
an apparently innocent qualification like "English-speaking"
could leave out much of N3, obstructing the basic purpose of
the whole election as a means of insuring a voice for all residents.
A third sort of development in learning to use power
in different ways was in individual bases for decision-making.
Ibid., The themes were suggested in conversation
with Mrs. Rose, but their interpretation is my own.
111.
At first, people tended to vote in loose neighborhood blocs;
in fact, there was some fear that sharp inter-neighborhood
divisions would prevent any work being done, and there were
also long-standing rivalries between COBI and the WHCC.
By
the end of the three months, however, the potential splits
had not emerged.
Rather, people were voting on issues, in-
stead of along neighborhood lines.
explanations for this.
There were several possible
Committee members had volunteered as
individuals, and thus were not representatives of any interests
but what their own consciences might dictate. There was a
psychological pressure of constrained time, as well as one in
the fact that residents had originally asked for such a setup and if they failed to get things going, MC would founder
by no fault but their own.
There was the past experience in
all neighborhoods of working with, and building up some trust
in, the professionals from Gray's office, CEOC, and the Cambridge Corporation.
Even so, the individualistic voting or-
ientation could not necessarily have been predicted and really
emerged only at the end. 6
The fourth sort of power-learning was in
the kind of
area-wide interest and consciousness evoked in some participants,
especially those who had had only limited experience in
community groups before.
Committee,
6
For instance, after serving on the
two nuns were moved to run for neighborhood
Ibid. For example, Mrs. Rose told of her own surprise
and philosophical satisfaction when at a last meeting, her own
neighbors voted against a position she herself had championed.
112.
Planning Team positions
-
-
something which nuns had never
done before in Cambridge.
A product emerged from the Committee, as well, and
it would constitute an input to the functions of power-buildingand mobilization.
By the second week in February, the
Committee had made enough headway to hold a "Model Cities
Constitutional Convention" for all area residents, in order
to report on their work so far.
Here, incidentally, also
arises the operating theme of visibility and communications.
The Drafting Committee asked the Convention for approval of the
recommendations it had devised so far, and also asked for
"permission to continue to meet to discuss and draft the remainder of the ordinance" for its eventual submission to area
referendum.
And, the Committee extended an open invitation
to all residents of the area to participate "as members of the
volunteer group.
The substance so presented to, and approved by, the
Convention participants dealt mainly with the CDA's composition,
and defined MC voting eligibility for area residents.
Here
was the beginning for Community political power-building within the Model Cities official CDA structure.
The CDA board
would have twenty-four members, two-thirds of them elected
neighborhood representatives, and one-third non-residents. The
non-residents were to be representatives of eight specified
Residents' Volunteer Drafting Committee, Model Cities
Convention, mimeo pamphlet, February 10, 1968.
113-.
interests, including one each for five city agencies, one
for all Cambridge academic institutions of higher learning,
one for all area businesses, and one for all area non-profit
organizations.
Many of the Committee members felt the
edu-
cational institutions, businesses, and nonprofit organizations were "lucky to get any representation" on the CDA.
Since these were not given any voice in the drafting process
that was probably a reasonable observation.
By April, the other matters of CDA organization had
been worked out, and the draft ordinance taken to the area
people for their approval.
Once again, the theme of visibility
and communication was prominent.
The committee determined
that a convention would not do, since the whole CDA organization was too vital a matter to leave to voluntary attendance
at a convention.
Accordingly, the community referendum was
conducted on an intensive face-to-face basis.
Copies of the
draft ordinance and a summary were delivered to each household during the week preceding the vote.
The referendum it-
self was then conducted door-to-door, with canvassers visiting every household to record residents' votes.
If approved,
the ordinance would next go to City Council for final action.
The final ordinanceas submitted for referendum included the provisions approved at the February convention, and
also a delineation of CDA functions and responsibilities. These
followed in general, the originally suggested guidelines, with
some innovations that the Committee felt to be particularly
114.
One such aspect
important aspects of community power-use.
for instance, was provision for impeachment and recall.
Any CDA Board member could be impeached by a majority of the
Board, or could be recalled by a public referendum.
The
residents intended that by these mechanisms either the Board
or the community would have a means of assuring the answerability of each individual Board member.
meetings were to be open ones.
And, all Board
Also, the Board's capability
to concentrate on policy decisions was enhanced by the fact
that fiscal detail could be the City Manager's task, and
that the City staff professionals would be responsible for
implementation yet still answerable to the Board.
The Drafting Committee phase did serve the functions
of mobilization, political learning, and power-building, even
though it had taken up much of the planning year.
A basic
question, however, could be raised as to its value with respect to two aspects of community power-building:
who, did the Volunteers really represent?
what, or
And, how was the
rest of the community ever involved, and what were the prospects for their becoming even more or less involved later on?
Both these aspects revolve around the old matter of forming
the Drafting Committee.
matter.
There is, however, an even more basic
Namely, what was the good of spending valuable time
to develop a process and political capability directly involving only a small proportion of residents?
There is evidence to demonstrate that the commitment to
115.
such a process was worthwhile, and that these questions
can be answered in light.of that evidence.
The first area of possible doubt involved the Committee members, and the fear that they really represented
nobody, or else only a very limited group of somebodies who
built power not necessarily of the "community" type.
Let
us briefly examine the volunteer mechanism by which they were
brought into the Committee.
This mechanism ran the risk that
there might be potentially interested people, whose interest
was, in fact, not aroused in time, due to lack of information
or-awareness about Model Cities.
In the December preparations,
it might have been possible to go through neighborhoods, testing for interest by raising potential issues and giving general information.
This was a reasonable approach,
but was not
promising for the particular neighborhoods involved,
reasons.
First, it is
for two
a maxim of political behavior that
only a small proportion of community members are likely to
rise to the fore as active participants in community action
endeavors.
8
This alone, cannot justify lack of effort to
For example, Robert Michels' well-known "iron law of
oligarchy" describes the phenomenon whereby a small proportion
of the members of any group tend to play active dominating or
organizing roles for that group. Contemporary works on the subject of community political power indicate similar themes; for
example, see Polsby, op. cit. Even Saul Alinsky, noted for his
"power" approach to community action, considers it an excellent
showing if as much as 2% of a community becomes activist even
on some major issue. (Alinsky, in a speech at Ford Hall Forum,
Jordan Hall, Boston, December 17, 1967).
116.
increase the interest of others, but considered along
with Cambridge's time constraint, it made the "volunteerat-meetings" idea more understandable.
A second point, particularly relevant to Cambridge,
was that much interest and publicity had previously been
given community action of various kinds, so that one could
assume that most people possibly interested in involvement
had at least known of the activists and possibilities that
had been given publicity the preceding April, and again in
the fall when the award had fallen to Cambridge.
The dif-
ference between being aware and being willing to do preliminary work is the one that separates most people from any
kind of volunteer action.
For instance in N4 there had been
little interest in participating in planning before COBI got
some action going; when they finally opened a tot-lot, it
was occasion for sudden'enthusiasm, and a carnival-like dedication attended by some three hundred residents.
In other
words, although many may be interested by results, only a
relative few can be drawn by the work that must be done first.
During the drafting, the Committee continually solicited more
volunteer participation, and there was not much response.
What, then, was the good of involving a few citizens
in an ordinance-drafting process, when at least some more
might have been drawn by more concrete action on programs or
issues?
This was, in effect giving lower priority to mobili-
zation functions, and more emphasis to political learning and
building.
In Cambridge, the leading justification might well
116a.
have been that the drafting experience actually developed
some crucial cadres of a community-based political system,
in which mobilization would have a role later on.
One such
cadre were the leaders, such as Mrs. Ro-se, who by virtue of
the Committee experience developed the capabilities to think
and act on a community-rather than neighborhood scale,
to use political and organizational power in
and
a framework
relevant to the governmental political structure which the
community would have to confront in order to ever make gains.
A second "cadre" was developed among the Committee members who were less the "leader" type.
Their experience gird.ed
them for a second-order elite role, which fulfills a number of
political functions in a fluid system: these are the people
who know the real issues and the leaders first-hand, and can
perform a mediating role between them and the mass of people.
They pass information in both directions, and may be a source
of new leadership in
time.
In these ways, the Drafting Committee did develop important community assets.
Although some potentially interested
people were probably by-passed at the beginning, the process
was possibly the most productive one in the short time available.
It was.the resultant, insofar as the time allowed, of
an open political arena, in which the most active move to the
top.
One question must still be considered.
That is the
proposition that by virtue of the Committee's visibility and
117..
experience, the volunteer leaders were raised to power
positions which new or potential leaders would be unable
to challenge, even in other community activities.
These
citizen.participants might actually have been obstructing
Iaccess
attainment" for others.
In support of this propo-
sition, one could point to the Planning Team elections held
in N3 and N4 during March of 1968.
In N4, four out of five
newly elected Team members were also Drafting Committee
activists; in Donnelly Field, two of the four new seats went
to Committee people.
However, the bulk of evidence indicated
that access was not being blocked for others.
The Drafting
Committee people formed no monolithic "elite" by any means.
In the Planning Team elections they ran against each other,
and some were among the losers.
More basically, the Draft-
ing Committee was a temporary body; if they wished to be
elected to the CDA, individual Committee members would have
to go back to seek support from their own neighborhoods.
Finally, there was the possibility that ex-Committee
members, by virtue of their recent visibility and power experience, would have a better chance than others for winning
election to the CDA.
Even granted this situation, there is
the point that when constituted as a CDA, the group would
form a focal point for competition. Other community groups
or individuals would know exactly who to watch, and who to
use as a target,
an elite to bargain with,
pushing specific interests.
or a tool for
The recall mechanism could aid
118.
them in securing Board answerability.
We had also raised another aspect of the value of
the Drafting Committee process, in light of the larger community which was not directly involved.
How was the time
spent on drafting. of active relevance to them, and would
they become involved directly later on?
We have indicated
a view that the Committee did establish some political resources of community value.
Even though there was to be
less time remaining for program planning, the programs that
would eventually emerge had a good chance of reflecting real
community needs and desires, by virtue of this newly developed political capability.
This was particularly important
in Cambridge, where the community had previously been cast
in a defensive position vis-a-vis industrial, governmental
and institutional giants.
There were, too, prospects for the direct mobilization
and involvement of more neighborhood people.
The drafting
phase emphasized organizing, and the beginning of efforts to
"get the word out," by holding open meetings, the February
convention, and the April referendum.
In the next phase, com-
pleting the planning year, the size of the involved population
could grow for at least two reas.ons.9
First, the sixteen CDA
9
Robert Gustafson, Office of Community Development,
City'of Cambridge. Telephone interview on February 28, 1968.
The themes were suggested by Mr. Gustafson, and their interpretation is my own.
119.
residents were to be elected from sixteen separate districts, each representing an average of just over 220 families.
Hopefully, they would be able to carry on regular
dialogue with these relatively small constitutencies, and
small discussion groups could be formed for each.
Second,
the program planning would involve people's lives, and as
it became more concrete, so also the degree of interest and
involvement could rise.
There are related matters of attitude and expectation
also.
Previous to the drafting phase, there was a wide
range of resident attitudes toward citizen control: some welcomed it and wanted more, others felt that the neighborhood
10
people were not sufficiently experienced and knowledgable.
It was likely that such a range of views still existed in
April of 1968, but the Drafting Committee's emergence with
a product must have drawn some doubters closer to the optimistic end of the spectrum.
lated matter.
Expectations are a closely re-
We have noted that people tend to become more
visibly involved when there are some concrete achievements for
them to enthuse over.
In Cambridge, up to two or three years
before Model Cities, the people had learned not to expect much,
to distrust City Hall and "improvement"
programs.
But, since
that time, at least four visible achievements had bolstered
their hopes. 1 1 Perhaps one of the best testimonies to resident
10Donavan, op. cit.
llRose, op. cit. The "four achievements" were: two
tot-lots, one low-income rehabilitated house saved from the
Polaroid Corporation, and commitments for a new neighborhoodstaffed health center.
120.
optimism was on the night of Washington's approval of-the
Cambridge MC proposal.
On that night, neighborhood en-
thusiasm burst into a huge party, where there were spontaneous nominations for MC area police and-fire chiefs, and
talk of cordoning off the area.
On that night at least, there
was a contagious feeling of potency, a consciousness of the
Model Neighborhood as a very special physical and social entity. 12
4.
The Potential for Program Achievement
Cambridge MC had taken a gamble on spending three
whole months to focus on some participation functions that I
had originally suggested as possibly necessary conditions to
the "higher" function of policy/program achievement.
Although
there was evidence that the initial functions had indeed had
good beginnings, there was still a potential price to be paid
during the ensuing months of the planning year.
That was the
shortened time span for coming up with the MC programs, fulfilling that eventual "achievement" function.
Gray had successfully gained Federal permission to use
time in a way deemed suitable for Cambridge.
Still, there was
the statuory planning year to be reckoned with, at least because of the necessity of being able to get new appropriations
when they. were due to be made.
And, more fundamentally, there
was the essential purpose behind MC, that improvements be made
1 2 Donavan,
o.
cit.
121.
in people's living situations.
If Cambridge had chosen to
first develop an effective process, by concentrating on the
first-necessity participation functions, the value of that
process would emerge in its effect on substantive achievements later on.
Accordingly, vi shall speculate briefly on
the issues and problems that were likely to emerge when the
CDA would begin to formulate policy and program.
The most pressing problem for Cambridge Model Neighborhood residents was preservation of residential space and environment.
Some means of securing this would have to be taken,
then could come solutions to the vanguard of slum problems
like housing, health, and services.
The preservation prob-
lem would depend greatly on delicate negotiation of two kinds.
One kind was negotiation between the residents and the outside
interests like industry and educational institutions.
A u-
nited community front, backed by the CDA structure, would be
capable of bargaining with the nonresident giants, where
smaller resident groups would have only dubious influence.
The other kind of negotiation would be intra-neighborhood.
The plurality of interests likely to exist in any community
was increased in the MC area by the difference in races . and
ethnic differences.
The very different resident neighbor-
hoods would have to cooperate in order to present enough influence to save the whole.
The operating theme of possible
divisions of labor could also enter here, and could be an
aid where interests on different issues made division possible.
122.
Although neighborhood differences did not cause
problems during the drafting phase, they were more likely
to come to the fore in policy discussions in the CDA. This
was because policy would involve matters much closer to the
residents' lives.
A good example would be in the area of
housing: since housing involves the possibility of racial
integration, WH and N4 residents could be likely to seek
very different priorities and prefer different program approaches.
Still another set of potential difficulties surrounded the structural aspects of the CDA, and this again
One of the first, and
involves the division-of-labor theme.
continuing CDA tasks would be to determine its own role and
Although given a structu-
scope in action as issues came up.
ral role as policy-making body, the CDA would have to develop
that role by choosing how much control it would exert over
specific issues.
For instance, the WH urban renewal project
would still be in execution stages
-
-
the CDA would have a
structural right to oversee any renewal activities, but could
conceivably use this power in any way, even to turn major responsibility over to the WHCC.
A closely related matter would be the division of responsibilities. CDA had been given power to determine "policy",
while the City Manager would see to fiscal and administrative
detail, and the Gray or other staff to "planning" detail.
In
effect, policy execution could also become policy determination
123.
thus usurping the CDA role.
One crucial factor here, would
be the CDA's ability to keep on top of important policy
items and their implementation
-
-
this was where the politi-
cal learning from the drafting stage could really pay off.
Another of the operating themes suggested earlier
was the use or involvement of existing community groups.
This is directly related to another potential CDA difficulty
in program achievement: the problem of divergent interests
and dissatisfaction that would possibly arise from community
elements who were not even indirectly represented in the
Drafting Committee, and who were given only token representation on the CDA.
These were the business interests, social
service groups, and institutions.
It could also apply to
a major group so far lacking much direct representation: the
moderate-to middle-income families in the area.
Their lack
of representation in the process thus far had been more by
virtue of circumstance than anything else.
It stemmed from
the fact that in the MC area, most citizen action experience
over recent years had come for low-income people, through the
poverty programs and the settlement houses.
income people who predominated in COBI.
It was also low-
The major exception
to this trend was the WHCC, but that committee numbered only
fifteen and served largely inan advisory role.
If the CDA
turned out to be similarly weighted by low-income interests,
the more moderate-income groups, businesses, and so on, could
find themselves on the short end of policy questions of all
124.
kinds.
Still another of the five suggested themes arises
again when considering the CDA program-achievement potenThis is the use or role of professionals working
tials.
with residents.
One critical factor here would be city
professionals' willingness and ability to work in line with
real CDA intentions.
Since the City Managereiwas yet to be
named by City Council, his role and effectiveness remained
open to speculation, aside from the fact that he would be
responsible to the Council and its ups and downs.
More op-
timistic predictions could be made for the other professionals involved, if they could continue to earn the same kind
of trust as that vested in Gray by the Drafting Committee
members.
All these considerations would apply as well to
the matter of possible differences or communications gaps between the CDA residents and the eight CDA technical-professional people.
5.
The Chances for Successful Fulfillment of
the Citizen Participation Functions
The Cambridge Model Neighborhood was characterized
as ethnically diverse, with sharp social differences among
neighborhoods within the whole area.
Despite the relatively
small population, these divergencies had tended to preclude
the formation of any sort of a united community front, even
though such a unified effort might have been the way to
125.
preserve the residential neighborhoods from outside encroachment.
An eventual citizen participation function
would be achievement of preservation programs, but the
first relevant functions would be those of mobilization,
and political learning and power-building.
The past several years had witnessed the beginnings
ea~
of citizen involvement that functionto mobilize, and to
teach and build political power.
Action was restricted to
small issues and block-or/small-neighborhood concern, but
nonetheless there had been some concrete successes.
With
impetus from the antipoverty program, and from interested
professionals, some of the citizen groups had moved toward
real control of some programs and projects that affected
their own neighborhoods.
When MC arose it was perceived by many, as a means of
further developing resident control. Bolstered by Gray's
orientation and some particularly alert residents, the MC
proposal was submitted in the limelight of real citizen involvement.
Further developing the structural and informal
context for that involvement raised further potentials. There
was the question of"choosing"
resident participants, settled
in the first phase by the voluntary Committee arrangement.
And, even more essential, there was the drafting phase commitment to the non-achievement functions of participation, particularly political learning and power-building.
That commitment to process was a gamble in
terms of
126.
the time used up for process,Awould show its tally later
on as the CDA worked to form substantive policy and program.
Difficulties here could be anticipated in light of neighborhood differences, the delicacy of necessary negotiations to
preserve the neighborhood, the essential good will and abilities of professionals working with the CDA residents.
And, there was a likely possibility of competing community
interests arising with each issue.
The themes of dividing
or delineating labor, and using community groups, would come
to the fore.
In all this,
I: can see some distinct indications of
progress toward some of the citizen participation functions.
The central one is that in a community desperately in need
of effective unity in order to fight its dragons, there arose
the makings of mobilization, and a real political power
structure for use in that fight.
There was also the potential
danger that another participation function would, however, be
obstructed.
This was access attainment for some community
elements.
If the system can be maintained as an open one, it
will also include channels of influence for these competing
intra-community interests: they may be able to use the CDA as
a target or a sounding board, or even as a vehicle for promoting special interests.
The provisions for open meetings,
recall, and referendum all aid in this respect, but do not
guarantee that the system will remain open.
There is a
127.
danger that as deadlines draw near, the pressure for
"product" will be so great that "process" will be forgotten in the shuffle, and the larger part of the resident
community lost with it, at least as far as direct participation is concerned.
Another danger is that the CDA itself could become
4mmobilized and ineffective, by virtue of noncreative public
criticism, or CDA in-fighting.
This is critically dangerous
to the policy-and program-achievement function, which must
eventually succeed in meeting the Neighborhood's teetering
preservation problems.
The CDA residents face a difficult
task in balancing two necessities.
One is the need to con-
tinue and increase mobilization, to drum up enough community
interest and support to make a sound case in matters of preservation.
The other necessity is that in arousing broad in-
terest it also serve the function of access attainment.
It
must be able to recognize, negotiate and work with, the divergent intra-c.ommunity interests that are likely to arise.
And, all these necessities
must actually be well begun within
the time alloted by the national MC conditions.
128.
CHAPTER VI:
CONCLUSIONS
This study has ranged from a general citizen participation framework, to the Model Cities setting, to specific
case descriptions of the citizen involvement in Model Cities.
In conclusion, after a comment on what the Model Cities program tries to do, I will turn to some comparisons between the
Boston and Cambridge experiences.
The Model Cities legislation aimed at several things,
but at least two of the outstanding objectives were potentially conflicting.
These were the aims to develop products,
on one hand, and processes such as citizen participation, on
the other hand.
The possible conflicts between these aims
were further complicated by the vast scope of policy and program matters, and the constraints of limited time and money.
These complications tended to emphasize the product aims.
Thus, even though all my suggested functions for citizen participation were possible in Model Cities,
the one most likely
to be emphasized by circumstances was policy/program achievement.
Looking at the Boston and Cambridge experiences during
the first months of Model Cities, it was obvious that each
had developed in light of the unique context of each city,
even though both were oriented toward resident involvement to
an extent unmatched by other Model Cities.
However,
the con-
textual differences between Boston and Cambridge cannot be
129.
overemphasized, and any comparisons must be made in this
light.
One of the most basic and obvious differences was that
Boston's MC area was mainly a black ghetto, and a volatile
one at that; Cambridge's MC was a mix of slum and declining
areas, with a number ofethnic enclaves.
In 1968, the dif-
ference between black slums and white ones was perhaps more
critical than ever before, calling up two whole different
worlds of social, economic, and political significance.
A second distinction was the sizes of the two MC areas.
Boston's contained over 62,000 residents and covered 2000
acres; Cambridge's had 15,000 residents on 800 or so acres,
much of which was occupied by industrial and research activities.
The quantitative contrast in population makes also for
substantive differences in all matters such as communication,
mobilization, power, program scope and complexity.
That is,
working techniques appropriate to one MC area would be questionable in the other; similarly, there would be a difference
in the kinds of processes or products that could be realistically expected in either place.
A discussion of these para-
metric divergencies due to scale alone would be a good.subject
for another thesis.
Still another distinction that should be emphasized was
in the political settings for the two Model Cities.
In Bos-
ton, there had been a long history of renewal politics to go
along with a history of city political enclaves, reformers,
130.
These were prelude to the election
and counter-reformers.
of Mayor White, a "new breed" politician who followed the
Collins "traiational" administration.
White was a potent-
ially strong figure who would have to balance off a diversity of competitors, but had a good chance of building a
City Hall power base to do so.
Model Cities was his "baby",
something that could help make or break his solutions for
the black ghetto crisis.
In Cambridge, on the other hand, the political context
involved a relatively weak mayor, and a potentially strong
but ever-divided City Council.
Model Cities' strongest
backers in the city governmental framework were the professionals, rather than the politicians.
And,
the political
power vacuum in City Hall occasioned a possible opening for
a neighborhood-based political power, if one could be developed.
These were but a few of the most essential distinctions
between the Boston and Cambridge situations.
Keeping these
in mind, I shall examine some common elements that arose from
the shared situation of trying to promote resident participation in Model Cities.
Once again, the analytical framework
followed in the body of this thesis will be used as a pattern
for discussion.
I suggested several possible functions for citizen
participation:
mobilization, political learning and power-
building, access attainment, and policy- and programachievement.
The need for all these functions was present
131.
with different emphases in Boston and Cambridge Model Neighborhoods.
In Doston, different subareas of the Neighbor-
hood had different participation needs for first priority
--in some, mobilization was critical, while in others it
was access or political learning and building.
As a body,
however, the Boston Neighborhood Board concentrated on achievement functions, subordinating or ignoring the subarea needs.
On the other hand, in Cambridge the functions of citizen participation were explicitly separated in time.
The first
three months were spent on developing a citizen participation process that seemed to be aimed mainly at a political
learning-and-building function.
The next phase of operations
would be more likely to emphasize achievement, and possibly
mobilization., functions.
Successful functioning was limited in both cities, but
there were some interesting points for comparison.
First,
both needed mobilization of resident interest and activity,
and this function proved difficult for both.
Failure to
mobilize seemed a greater threat in Boston, where the Neighborhood was larger and more volatile, and where Board energies seemed to become more and more diffused as time went by.
In Cambridge, mobilization efforts seemed less complicated and
in better chance of some success.
In passing, one could point
to the contrast between election turn-outs in the two Model
C-ities.
The Boston Board election in August of 1967 drew
132.
some 12% of the eligible Model Neighborhood voters, while
for the Cambridge CDA referendum in April of 1968 votes were
intensively solicited and 33% of the whole Neighborhood population cast ballots.
The political learning and power-building function was
also needed in both cities, but received much more explicit
attention in Cambridge and seemed to be succeeding there in
several ways.
perhaps in order to be sustained, this func-
tion need continual reinvigoration7.And some focal attention.
During initial months, the high-points of resident involvement
in the two Model Cities indicated that reinvigoration was
occuring in Cambridge but not in Boston.
That is, the high
point for Boston community political action was in
the April
1967 Conference, and it seemed to decline steadily after that.
In Cambridge, however, one high point came in that same April
of 1967, and still another in April of 1968 with the referendum.
The reasons for these differences could lie in sev-
eral factors:
Boston MC's larger population, Cambridge's
explicit commitment to developing participation, Cambridge's
delineation of tasks and timing.
The access attainment function turned out to be problematic for Boston and also Cambridge.
In both cases access
was not made readily available to some important community
elements,
and their being left out of initial planning
stages constituted some threat to eventual success of the
Model Cities programs.
The excluded groups in Boston had
133.
important community political and professional leaders,
among them the increasingly powerful black militants.
The
excluded groups in Cambridge were largely middle-class interests, both business and social.
A key issue for both -cities
would be how to include these groups and avoid any obstructions they might put before Model Cities.
In this respect,
Cambridge mid-
Cambridge's situation seemed more promising:
dle class interests could benefit themselves by Model Cities
participation, while Boston's black militants might see more
benefit for themselves in Model Cities obstruction.
Finally, the policy/program achievement function was
major to the Model Cities idea itself.
Boston's Board had
begun to experience the difficulties of fulfilling this as a
citizen participation function, and the Cambridge CDA would
probably have similar difficulties.
The structural settings
in the two cities exerted different sorts of pressures in
this respect, however.
In Boston, there was a Neighborhood
Board and and MCA both responsible for achievements;
con-
ceiveably, even a complete Board failure in this function
could be compensated by some MCA progress.
In
Cambridge,
how-
ever, the CDA (with its residents' majority) would be the
only body responsible for achievements; its failure would
mean the failure of Model Cities for Cambridge.
Still another aspect of my analysis dealt with the structural and informal contexts for citizen involvement.
Compar-
isons here could amount to a complete reiteration of both
134
ease studies.
It is particularly notable, though, that in
both Model Cities, resident participants were included on
major decision-making bodies and had a determining voice.
Resources were formally provided in terms of staff and funding.
And, in both cases there was informallcommitment by
officials, to making citizen involvement an effective part of
Model Cities.
A critical factor in this respect was the pri-
ority placed on that process-oriented commitment relative to
the other kind of Model Cities aim, which was product-oriented.
If key officials and professionals placed priority on product,
as appeared to happen in Boston, the citizen participation
functions of first necessity could be ignored and doomed to
failure or very limited success.
On the other hand, official
and professional recognition of process for its own sake could
prove to be a critical ingredient for the success of all the
citizen involvement functions.
Working modes and tactics involved some clements that
were important in Boston and Cambridge.
Perhaps the most
central one was that of substantive issues, and the focus
or lack of focus given them.
"Issues" are significant if
they arouse interest, and it is this characteristic rather
than the objective "size" which is
important.
Significant is'
sues can be important as communicating and mobilizing forces,
and also as structurin, forces that help delineate tasks and
priorities.
To be significant in these ways, itiis not
enough for issues merely to exist; they must be focused on,
135.
and made specific and relevant enough so that they stand out
against all other concerns.
In Boston as well as Cambridge,
a focus or lack of focus on issues made important differences in both mobilization and structuring.
Thus, the exis-
tence of focal issues was a key factor to the success of two
participation functions, mobilization and achievement.
The importance of issues as aids to the mobilizing function
was manifested similarly in the two cities.
First, in the
proposal-submission stage, residents of both places were mobilized by the focal issue of resident control.
Second, in
latbr months, the lack of focus of "significant" issues fostered situations in which relatively few people were mobilized to action.
For Boston, this occured whenever the Board
wanted to rouse community interest in general !'planning"; for
Cambridge, it was the case with ordinance-drafting, which was
not a significant "issue" for most community residents.
The importance of focal issues as task delineators is
especially significant with respect to the program-achievement function.
When there were issues specific enough to de-
lineate roles and tasks, resident groups in both cities worked
well and there were good chances for program achievement or
policy achievement.
Without such focal issues the residnets'
energies were unguided and time-consuming, and design or decision was not so likely to emerge.
Thus, the Boston Board
handled its first tasks well, when these involved substantive
issues of organization.
As the issues of concern became
136.
more and more diverse and less well-focused, the Board found
it increasingly difficult to operate in a productive manner.
In Cambridge, on the other hand, the Drafting Committee
was faced from the start with a whole set of structured and
specific issues, and managed to deal with them all in an
organized fashion, leading tb the achievement of a CDA formula.
The Cambridge CDA was destined to face a greater dis-
persion of issues, and would have some of the same sorts of
problems which had already begun for Boston's Board.
None-
theless, the three-month experience in learning the uses of
power, plus the added pressure of passing time, may yet help
promote the issue-focus that the CDA will need.
Another item that comes under working modes and tactics
was the idea that resident participants would be playing some
sort of political power game, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Where Boston's Board was playing a sort of "conser-
vation politics," Cambridge's resident activists were aiming
further over toward the resident control end of the range.
In Cambridge, the residents' perceptions of power and its
uses seemed to be more explicit, perhaps because of the openly
stated emphasis on "process".
In either city, it would re-
main to be seen what sort of power games would finally turn
out to be effective or not in promoting residents' needs
and wants.
In
Boston,
in the immediate afterrmath of the
Martin Luther King assassination,
new "black power" forces
137.
were rising and could have great impact on the.future disposition of power in Model Cities.
A major tactical dimension not yet-. discussed in this
thesis is time:
success may only be possible over long per-
iods of time, allowing the explicit working out of the functions
of citizen representation and the necessary resource deployments.
In
this wise,
citizen participation in Model Cities
suffered from the outset.
The legislative setup placed sev-
ere contraints on time, and similtaneously called for unprecedented scope and comprehensiveness.
Under these circum-
stances, dtizen representation could be successful only in
a limited sense, depending on local abilities and on participants' use or perceptions of time.
Federal administrators
could possibly be convinced that they should consider particular cities' needs and temper the time constraints accordingly, but on the local scene the participants' perceptions of time as a constraint would still be an important
part of their work.
Resident participants in both cities
seemed to leave most of the concern with "time" and deadlines up to officials and professionals.
Still, residents
were aware of corotraint, and had to work within the alloted
time.
In this sense, Cambridge's setting apart of the first
three months was probably an aid to residents' 'work. They
had a definite job to be done in a short, easily visualized, span of time.
In Boston, on the other hand, both
task and time seemed less well-defined, the time extending
over a longer and therefore hazier period.
138.
Finally, working tactics included the five themes involving resource use and deployment.
One was division of
labor, or some delineation of tasks.
Model Cities'
very
scope made this a necessity when it came to policy or program
achievement--this was evident in Boston and would arise in
Cambridge also.
As mentioned above, wherever tasks could
be delineated it made operations much smoother.
A second theme was the use or role of professionals,
already mentioned here inoconnection with the various citizen participation functions and their success.
In Cambridge,
the explicit concern with political learning and powerbuilding probably made professionals much more aware of these
needs and possibilities.
In retrospect, the explicit ap-
proach seemed more advantageous, since it encouraged professionals to provide definite task guidelines, and probably
also reminddd them to maintain continuous communication with
the residents involved.
Another theme in resource use was the setting for
communications and visibility.
As to communications down-
ward into the community, Boston's large MC population made
face-to-face communications impractical, while in Cambridge
they were likely to be more effective.
There was also the
aspect of visibility of resident participants from above.
In Boston's highly bureaucratized city government, the resident Board was visible only by virtue of its connection with
the MCA (unless Board members would take continual initiatives to draw official attention).
In Cambridge, with a
139
relatively weak governmental apparatus, the residents' group
could be made highly visible with the aid of publicity and
a professional like Justin Gray.
The two remaining themes dealt with using existing community groups, and using and perceiving power.
These, too,
have already been mentioned in this chapter, in connection
with the functions of access and political power-building.
In fact, all these themes and functions tie together in any
number of ways.
One way is to see them as parts of Model
Cities' over-all vigor as a program.
That vigor or viability
in part depends on a group's ability to sustain power, if
necessary by including other strong groups or else by obviating any threats posed by them.
Where citizen participants
are doing the invigorating and trying to maintain power,
their relationship to other citizen groups is critical, espec_
ially if those groups are potentially or actually ptwerful
ones.
Cambridge and Boston Model Cities shared the circumstance of stemming from the same national program.
If any
general policy lesson emerges from the differences and commonalities,
perhaps the major one is the impoatance of admin-
istrative flexibility at the Federal level.
It should allow
for different local needs in the functions of citizen involvement.
For example, the legislative scope and constrained
time lead to concentration on the achievement function in
Boston, even though the various Model Neighborhood subareas
needed very different citizen-involvement functions.
Cam-
140.
bridge was able to work within the framework of the political
learning and power-building function which was actually its
greatest initial need--but much of this came about through
Gray's boldness and his determination to mold Model Cities
to local needs.
Time constraints should delineate definite periods for
purposes of appropriations, Federal oversight, and general
prod to organized action.
However, those time constraints
should also be flexible enough to accomodate special needs,
and the development of processes that will be critical later
on.
Delineation of issue areas is already encouraged by the
Guidelines, but there should be ways for a city to take specific substantive focuses early in the program.
One way
to accomplish this would be to give block-grant "program implementation" funds from the start, with the requirement that
they be used during the planning period.
Finally, there is the potential conflict between the
legislative objectives calling for process and product.
If
a program like Model Cities requires citizen involvement, it
should do so with the recognition that such involvement has
manZ possible functions.
The functions necessary and approp-
riate for any one city should be possible under the program.
That is, there should be realistic chances for successful
participation of the sort needed locally; otherwise, "citizen
participation" is only a meaningless catch-phrase.
Model
141.
Cities as it now stands does not allow enough time and latitude for full development of the local participation functions, except perhaps in the unique instance of Cambridge,
where the legislative program was actually manipulated and
bent to local needs.
However, real encouragement to citizen
involvement would be possible in Model Cities even though it
may enjoy only limited "success."
The key seems to lie in
administrative oversight that recognizes the diversity of
purposes possible in various citizen involvement processes.
Once again, then, I stress the importance of administrative flexibility.
City professionals and administrators
be encouraged to give explicit priority to first-necessity
functions of citizen participation, by lenient funding and
timing provisions.
Also, the community "representative"
formula should not be allowed to seal off or discourage competition among several community interests or groups.
Interest
and power are tied to issues, and different groups must be
included according to the issues at hand.
In concluding, some comments are in order about the
usefulness of the analytical framework proposed and followed
in this thesis.
That framework had three aspects:
the func-
tions of citizen involvement, the structural and informal
context, and the operating modes and tactics.
The most useful of these aspects seemed to me to be
the proposed citizen involvement functions.
All the sug-
gested functions seemed appropriate to the needs of both
142.
observed cities, although the order of their importance varied according to local circumstances.
I had also implied
a hierarchy among the functions, in which the lower-order
functions could be necessary conditions to successful operation of the higher ones.
Thus, mobilization and political
learning/power-building were lower-order, or of first ne-cessity; then came access attainment and finally policy/product achievement.
The case studies suggested some further comments on
this functional hierarchy.
The two first-necessity func-
tions still seemed to be necessary conditions to an eventual
achievement-function success.
But, the access-attainment
function fits less well into a hierarchy.
It could better
be seen as part of another whole dimension for citizen participation, rather than as one of a hierarchy of functions.
As an element of different dimension, it could describe
which groups are given or denied access to the citizen involvement process itself, and through that process are able
to gain further access to the real sources of power.
The policy- or program-achievement function also deserves fixther comment, since it naturally receives emphasis
in an operation like Model Cities.
In both the observed
cases, the achievement function had only begun to be attempted
by resident participants, and there were many potential
difficulties to eventual success in this capacity.
This
raises the possibility that the achievement function is too
143.
difficult for citizen groups to attempt, or that at least
they must be carefully prepared and guided, and given ample
time to fashion those achievements.
Here, the role of the
professional may be a key factor once again.1
He must be
willing and able to take on the long task of building people's capabilities to make policy and program decisions.
A second analytical aspect was the structural and informal context for participation.
My framework made this
aspect into a catch-all for a variety of relevant factors,
but provided little systematic basis for analyzing them.
A
fruitful line of inquiry might be to more carefully delineate
key structural and informal elements, and make evaluations
of their relative influences on citizen involvement.
My third aspect for analyzing was operational tactics
and use of resources.
More attention might have been paid
to the idea of the citizens' "power game" and position along
a possible range of controls.
As to the deployment of re-
sources, five specific themes were suggested, and these appeared to be highly relevant in both case studies.
Depending
on the most-needed participation functions, different themes
came to the fore.
Any or all of these thematic elements
could be used as the focal point for observing citizen par-
ticipation under way.
Emphasis on the difficulties of program achievement,
and the related role of the professional, was suggested in
talks with Professor Bernard Frieden. The interpretation is
my own.
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